Embassy Row

OBAMA AS KERENSKY?

A former Cuban political prisoner who later served as a U.S. human rights envoy to the United Nations fears President Obama, in supporting the reinstatement of the ousted president of Honduras, is making the same mistakes as an early Russian revolutionary who was too weak to stand up to hard-line Bolsheviks.

Armando Valladares, who spent 22 years in Fidel Castro’s prisons, compared Mr. Obama to Alexander Kerensky, who led a short-lived socialist government in 1917. Mr. Obama has called for the return of Manuel Zelaya, whom the military arrested in June on orders of the Honduran Supreme Court, which charged him with violating the constitution by trying to seek re-election to a second term. The army whisked away Mr. Zelaya to neighboring Costa Rica.

Mr. Zelaya has received strong support from some of the most left-wing leaders in Latin America, including Raul Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

The Organization of American States also has called for Mr. Zelaya’s reinstatement. It is sending a delegation of foreign ministers - Kenneth Baugh of Jamaica, Patricia Espinosa of Mexico, Peter Kent of Canada, Bruno Stagno of Costa Rica, Jorge Taiana of Argentina and Carlos Morales Troncoso of the Dominican Republic - to Honduras on Tuesday to try to encourage more talks between the civilian interim government and Mr. Zelaya.

Mr. Valladares, in an e-mail analysis, urged Mr. Obama to break with the anti-American leaders calling for Mr. Zelaya’s return because his reinstatement would drive Honduras into Mr. Chavez’s political sphere.

“President Obama runs the risk of passing into history, as the Americas’ Kerensky, if he helps to push Honduras toward the Chavez abyss,” Mr. Valladares said.

After the February revolution of 1917, Mr. Kerensky took over as prime minister of Russia in July but was overthrown by Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin four months later in the October revolution.

“Honduras was fast moving toward a Chavist dictatorship, crossing over the constitution and laws,” Mr. Valladares said.

He criticized Mr. Obama and democratic leaders in Latin America for ignoring Mr. Zelaya’s actions and demanding his reinstatement without consideration to the opposition in Honduras from the Supreme Court, the Congress and even members of his own political party.

“One of the greatest joint clamors of both leftists and ’useful moderates’ of contemporary history cried out with a fury against a small country that decided to resist those pressures,” said Mr. Valladares, who was appointed by President Reagan in 1982 to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

CONSOLING RAPE VICTIM

Liberia’s deputy ambassador traveled to Arizona last week to comfort an 8-year-old Liberian girl who, police say, was raped by four other Liberian refugees in July.

Edwin Sele, the deputy chief of mission at the Liberian Embassy in Washington, spent five days in Phoenix investigating the case, which created outrage among Nigerian refugees in the United States.

“I talked with her, and I took her a teddy bear,” Mr. Sele told reporters. “She was very distressed. She’s really traumatized. She cried so bitterly that I almost cried.”

The Associated Press reported that the girl was in the custody of Child Protective Services because her father was quoted as saying that his daughter brought shame on his family. Mr. Sele, who met with the parents, said the father was misquoted because of a language barrier and wants his daughter to come home. Police are holding four boys ages 9 to 14.

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washington times.com.