WASHINGTON -- For more than a week, the State Department has stopped short of defining the military ouster of Honduras President Manuel Zelaya as a "coup."
The reluctance is fueling a political and legal debate over the definition of "coup," and whether the de facto Honduran government is legal. It has also fueled lingering suspicions that the U.S. might have been involved in the coup, given its longstanding ties to the Honduran military and the increasing criticism Zelaya has leveled at the United States in recent years. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has gone as far as to accuse the "Yankee empire," but not President Barack Obama, of playing a role in Zelaya's ouster. ...