Honduran deputy foreign minister says Tegucigalpa will not bow down before Washington

In an interview with teleSUR conducted on Tuesday, Gerardo Torres, the deputy foreign minister of Honduras, recounted the growing pressures that the United States has been exerting against President Xiomara Castro to prevent her administration from maintaining a sovereign and independent international policy.

“We have seen actions of pressure from the United States that have been escalating against President Castro.  The most recent is putting Honduras under attack in its position of regional leadership,” he said, referring to the criticisms that Washington made regarding the expression of respect Honduras showed for the results of the Venezuelan presidential elections in July.

“Honduras respects the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples.  That’s why our president congratulated President Nicolas Maduro’s victory once the Venezuelan authorities declared him the winner.”

Later, the highest point of the escalation of aggressions against Honduras occurred after Defense Minister Manuel Zelaya and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Gen. Roosvelt Hernandez, participated in a Latin American athletics event organized by the armed forces in Caracas.

“For some years now, within the framework of aggression against Venezuela, the United States has practically prohibited the armed forces of several countries from participating in events in Venezuela.  Honduras does not have to obey the mandates of other countries,” Torres emphasized.

Nevertheless, immediately after Zelaya and Hernandez returned to their country, Washington's ambassador to Tegucigalpa accused those Honduran officials of being drug runners and of meeting with drug traffickers.

“We remind the United States that those who were meeting with drug traffickers were them,” Torres said, mentioning that political figures like Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi had held meetings with former President Jon Hernandez, knowing that he was involved in international drug trafficking.