Zelaya’s removal sparks protests in Honduras

Yesterday’s removal of Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya, sparked protests in the country’s capital Tegucigalpa. The protestors put up barricades near the presidential palace as governments across the region condemned the first military overthrow in Central America since the end of the cold war.

Zelaya, who had been in office since 2006, was ousted after clashing with the judiciary, congress and the army over proposed constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election.

Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who announced an immediate curfew for Sunday and Monday nights. The country's leading court said it had authorised the toppling of the president.

The US and European Union joined Latin American governments in denouncing the coup. The US president, Barack Obama, distanced the US from any involvement in the coup."Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference," he said. Washington said it recognised only Zelaya as president.

Last week, Zelaya tried to fire the armed forces chief, General Romeo Vasquez, in a dispute over an attempt to hold an unofficial referendum about changing the constitution to allow presidential terms beyond a single, four-year stretch. Under the constitution as it stands, Zelaya would have been due to leave office in early 2010.The Supreme Court, which last week ordered him to reinstate Vasquez, said yesterday it had told the army to remove the president.

Zelaya may have exceeded the limits of his presidential authority by calling for an unconstitutional referendum and by attempting to dismiss the head of the armed forces for refusing to cooperate in said referendum. But using the military to depose Zelaya was absolutely and utterly wrong, no matter how mild their role was (if the reports are accurate).

Latin America has been plagued by military coups ever since the Spanish and Portuguese were ousted in the 1820s. It is not long since we have seen the passing of some extremely nasty dictators (Pinochet, Videla, Rios Montt, and Stroessner to name a few). Any military action against a duly elected leader is to be condemned absolutely. I hope to hell that this is not the start of the slippery slope back to those vile times.

NATO considered Italian coup

Britain and its Nato allies considered organising a coup in Italy in 1976 to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power. The documents, made public after 30 years, were found by an Italian researcher in the government archives at Kew, Surrey.

After 30 years of rule by the Christian Democrat party (DC), the country seemed ready for change. However the only party strong enough to beat them was the Partito Comunista Italiana (PCI), led by the moderate Enrico Berlinguer. In 1976, there was a strong chance the PCI would beat the Christian Democrats into second place.

A secret Foreign Office memo dated 6 May 1976, entitled Italy And The Communists: Options For The West, floated one possible course of action as "action in support of a coup d'etat or other subversive action". The authors admitted: "By its nature, a coup d'etat could lead to unpredictable developments." But they added that, in theory at least, "it could be promoted. In one way or another, the force of the right could be counted on, with the support of the police and the army". The idea of a coup to remove the PCI or stop it coming to power "could be considered attractive" – but the idea was rejected as "unrealistic".

The growth of Italian communism had worried politicians in the West. In January 1976, Kissinger told Willy Brandt, the former West German Chancellor, of his "strong anxiety" for the developing situation. The "political nature" of Nato, Kissinger said, would change if communists seized power of a Nato country. The rest of the alliance shared his worries. For all its reformism, Berlinguer's PCI was still close to Moscow. The biggest fear was about what would happen to Nato's nuclear security if the PCI came to power. "To put it crudely," as the Ministry of Defence put it, "sensitive documents could end up in Moscow."

I
n the event it was academic: the PCI finished second in the election, with 34.3 per cent of the vote to the DC's 38.7 per cent