BUSINESS COMMUNITY LEADERS SAY DE FACTO OFFICIALS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TEGUCIGALPA 000924 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/16/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM ECON HO SUBJECT: BUSINESS COMMUNITY LEADERS SAY DE FACTO OFFICIALS REMAIN INTRANSIGENT REF: TEGUCIGALPA 900 Classified By: Ambassador Hugo Llorens for reasons 1.4 b/d. ¶1. (C) Summary: At a September 14 meeting with three business community leaders, the Ambassador urged them to continue to press all concerned parties to support the San Jose Accords. Amilcar Bulnes, who heads a leading Honduran business association, said that he and his colleagues had unsuccessfully urged the de facto Attorney General, the head of the Supreme Court, and the newly installed President of Congress to agree to Zelaya's return in the context of the accords. All three officials had argued that implementing the accords would be illegal. The group maintained that the three officials are more adamantly opposed to Zelaya's return than de facto president Roberto Micheletti himself is. The businessmen said that they would continue their efforts, but they asserted that business leaders such as themselves have less influence with the government than is commonly believed. Bulnes assured the Ambassador that, to his knowledge, no members of the business community had participated in the coup d'etat. End summary. ¶2. (C) On September 14, the Ambassador met with a group of three leaders of the business community: Amilcar Bulnes, president of the Honduran Private Business Council (Spanish acronym COHEP); Juan Ferrera, Coordinator of the National Anticorruption Council; and Norman Garcia, president of the Foundation for Investment and Export Development (Spanish acronym FIDE). The Consul General and Economic Counselor also attended the meeting. Ferrera and Garcia had participated in the Ambassador's September 7 meeting with business community members and others, at which the Ambassador urged the group to let the de facto government know that the U.S. government was losing patience with its refusal to support the San Jose process (reftel). ¶3. (C) Bulnes told the Ambassador about his meetings with Attorney General Luis Rubi (who served under President Zelaya and has remained in office under the de facto regime), Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera Avila, and Jose Alfredo Saavedra, who replaced Micheletti as President of Congress. Rubi and Saavedra had maintained that the return of President Zelaya would be illegal. The three, Bulnes said, took a dim view of what they portrayed as an attempt by the U.S. to play games with Honduran law. In addition, they had expressed concern about the possibility that, if Zelaya returned, the U.S. would fail to ensure the implementation of safeguards aimed at preventing him from abusing power. However, he said, Rubi had left open the possibility in principle that there could be a political agreement that did not violate the law. Rubi and Saavedra, Bulnes said, appreciate the U.S. government's efforts to find a way out of the crisis, but are "more afraid of Mel" (Zelaya). Asked by the Ambassador who among the three officials was the most hard-line, Bulnes said that there was no distinction among them, adding that all three are more hard-line than de facto President Micheletti. ¶4. (C) Garcia gave a similar account of his own discussions with the three. He said that the Rivera Avila had come across as softer, but this was just because of his personality; his position was identical to that of the other two. Garcia said that the Attorney General had dismissed the idea of changing the constitution temporarily to allow the mechanisms of the San Jose Accords to take effect, saying that this would be illegal. ¶5. (C) Bulnes and the others told the Ambassador that, contrary to the beliefs of many outsiders, business community leaders like themselves have little influence on the de facto regime. Bulnes assured the Ambassador that, as far as he knew, no one in the business community had been involved in the coup d'etat. ¶6. (C) Ferrera expressed concern about the difficulty of finding a way out of the crisis in the face of the de facto regime's intransigence, a view echoed by Bulnes and Garcia. Garcia said that the crisis was tarnishing Honduras's reputation. The Ambassador told them that leadership from the business community remains important. The path forward, he said, must involve the signing of the San Jose accords and TEGUCIGALP 00000924 002 OF 002 the installation of a government of national reconciliation. This will ensure international community support for the November elections, will lead to a restoration of Honduras's strategic relationship with the U.S., and will allow Honduras to address the socioeconomic problems that hinder its development. He told the group that four of the six presidential candidates, whose parties between them won 92 percent of the vote in the last election, had agreed to meet with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on September 16. He encouraged the business leaders to urge the candidates to support the San Jose process. ¶7. (C) Bulnes reiterated that much opposition to Zelaya's return remains rooted in fear that he will act undemocratically if he returns, even in the context of the San Jose accords. There is widespread concern, he said, that Zelaya's return would pave the way for domination of the country by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Garcia said that Zelaya is capable of coming back without doing any damage himself, but his return could lead his supporters to cause turmoil. The Ambassador assured the business leaders that the implantation of the accords would include a verification commission consisting of extremely prominent members of the international community whom Zelaya would not dare to defy. He also noted that the way to counter Chavez was to restore democracy by signing San Jose. ¶8. (C) Bulnes said that Rivera Avila had told him that he would be open to the possibility of meeting with the Ambassador, provided that the Ambassador agreed to go to his office at the Supreme Court for the meeting. He told the Ambassador that the group would, as requested, talk with the presidential candidates. ¶9. (C) Comment: We agree that Rubi and Rivera are among the hardest of the hardliners; we have had mixed reports on Saavedra. We doubt that the coup could have taken place without the support of some business leaders. They certainly have been some of the most vocal voices against the San Jose Accord. The claim that they have little influence on Micheletti is probably an attempt to get back or to hang on to their visas, a sign that our visa revocations are having an effect. LLORENS