Reporting from Washington — After failing to stave off the military coup in Honduras, the Obama administration moved gingerly Monday to try to undo it, leaving key levers of U.S. influence untouched as it urged Hondurans and other countries in the region to seek a settlement.
The administration's approach appeared designed to avoid damaging Washington's ties either to U.S.-allied backers of the coup that forcibly removed President Manuel Zelaya or the regional powers who have universally condemned it.
President Obama expressed "great concerns" about the strife, and U.S. officials planned on attending an extraordinary session of the Organization of American States in Washington today to address the situation.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama said after a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. "In that we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia, and the Organization of American States."
But while condemning the overthrow, U.S. officials stopped short of declaring it a coup and would not demand the reinstatement of Zelaya. The administration left its ambassador to Honduras in place, while several left-wing governments in the region recalled theirs.
And despite control over millions of dollars in American aid and massive U.S. economic clout, the administration did not threaten sanctions or penalties against Honduran coup-backers for forming a new government the day after Zelaya was dragged from his bed and evicted from the country.
Before the removal of Zelaya on Sunday, administration officials were aware of the deepening crisis and said they spoke to Honduran officials in the hope of resolving the dispute and averting a forced transfer of power.
However, senior administration officials said the Honduran military ended those discussions on Sunday, and refused to take further calls.
Now, as U.S. officials assess the fallout from the first military overthrow in Latin America in 16 years, they made clear Monday that they are looking for a face-saving compromise that could restore democracy without risking further upheaval or destroying Honduras' fragile economy.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the political crisis "has evolved into a coup." But U.S. officials have not made a legal determination that the action actually constituted a coup, a finding that would trigger cutoffs of U.S. aid.
Clinton said the United States joined regional powers in condemning the move, and was working with other Latin American countries to find a way to restore "full democratic and constitutional order in the country." U.S. officials are "considering the implications" of the takeover for continued aid, but Clinton hinted that they hoped the crisis could be undone.
"This has been a fast moving set of circumstances over the last several days," she said. "If we were able to get a . . . status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome."
Zelaya has nudged his country in a leftward direction in recent years, forging closer ties with the region's stridently anti-U.S. leaders, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Castro brothers. When Zelaya in recent weeks began confronting his country's military and political establishment in a populist bid to seek a second term as president, U.S. officials expressed worry.
But administration officials did not explain why talks to avert the coup broke down, and Venezuela's Chavez led Washington's critics in the region in charging that the U.S. had a hand in the overthrow, a charge the administration dismissed.
Nonetheless, Obama offered a frank appraisal of U.S. history in the region, referring to its involvement in many of the region's coups over the last century.
"The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies," he said at the White House. "But over the last several years I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States."
paul.richter@latimes.com
