HONDURAS INDICATES IT WILL SIGN UN ANTICORRUPTION

UNCLAS TEGUCIGALPA 002938 SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR INL, INL/C, AND IO/UNP STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CEN, AND WHA/PPC E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KTIA KCRM KJUS EFIN ECON PHUM SOCI HO SUBJECT: HONDURAS INDICATES IT WILL SIGN UN ANTICORRUPTION CONVENTION REF: A. TEGUCIGALPA 2221 ¶B. TEGUCIGALPA 2757 ¶1. (SBU) Honduras was surprisingly absent among the 94 countries that gathered December 11 in Merida, Mexico to sign the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. According to press reports, apart from Honduras, the only other Latin American and Caribbean countries not to sign were Uruguay, Belize, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica. Some two weeks before the signing ceremony, Marco Bogran, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of the Presidency, had told PolOff that Honduras would in fact be among the original convention signatories. ¶2. (SBU) In comments before the Honduran press, Foreign Minister Leonidas Rosa Bautista said the Government of Honduras (GOH) was still in the process of internal consultations regarding the convention and had been unable to reach a consensus before the signing ceremony. However, based on PolOff's conversations with other high ranking MFA officials, it appears the GOH was simply caught unaware and unprepared for the convention ceremony. At this point, it is unclear whether the Honduran mission to the UN ever informed the MFA about the convention. (Comment: On December 18, the International Court of Justice in The Hague announced its decision on El Salvador's request to revise the court's original 1992 decision demarcating the Honduras - El Salvador border in Honduras' favor (ref A & septel). The border demarcation issue continues to be among the MFA's highest priorities (ref B),and much of its energy these last few weeks has been focused on this issue. As such, many high ranking MFA officials are in The Hague attending to the court's proceedings and were not available to focus on the UN Anticorruption Convention. End Comment) ¶3. (SBU) On December 17, Wendy Flores, Director for Multinational Affairs at the MFA, told PolOff that Honduras would indeed sign the convention, but she was not sure exactly when. PolOff encouraged the MFA to move the signing process forward as soon as possible so as to avoid sending the wrong type of signals to the international community. ¶4. (SBU) Post will continue to encourage Honduras to sign the convention and closely monitor Honduras' progress on this issue. Palmer