June 30, 2009
Associated Press

MIAMI — Coup opponents clashed with the Honduran military in Tegucigalpa where the U.S. Embassy instructed Americans to stay off the streets, but the U.S. Southern Command reported it was business as usual Monday for hundreds of U.S. troops at two sites in Honduras.

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No American forces were called back from the Soto Cano air base in Honduras, 60 miles from the capital, where about 600 U.S. forces serve on rotations.

The Pentagon has had a presence at Soto Cano since the 1980s, assisting air missions coming and going from Latin America. The hub typically gets busy for search-and-rescue operations during hurricane season.

“No more troops are coming here and none of us are leaving,” reported Air Force Lt. Candace Park by telephone from Soto Cano on Monday morning.

Likewise, the U.S. Southern Command kept its group of military officers intact and on assignment at the U.S. Embassy, said Southcom spokesman Jose Ruiz from Miami. There were no plans for reinforcements or withdrawal in the capital, he said.

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa posted a notice on its web site instructing Americans “to remain in their homes or hotels” unless they were leaving the country or had travel “of a life or death nature.”

It also told Americans planning to travel to Honduras to stay away.

On Monday, the Southern Command also confirmed that the alleged coup leader, Honduran Gen. Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, had been invited to last week’s change-of-command ceremony in which Air Force Gen. Douglas “Skeet” Fraser took charge at Southcom’s Doral, Fla., headquarters.

Vasquez did not attend but instead sent a more junior officer - Brig. Gen. Jose Gerardo Fuentes, director of Honduras’ Defense University. Southcom said the visit was ceremonial in nature and that Fuentes had no specific meetings with U.S. officials.

In attendance at the ceremonies were Southcom’s last Southcom chief, the NATO-bound Adm. James Stavridis; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Marine Gen. James Cartright, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff - a heavyweight lineup at the outpost for Latin American military policy just days ahead the region’s first military coup of the 21st Century.

Records reflect that Vasquez took two short courses in the 1970s and ’80s at the old School of the Americas in Panama, Southcom’s former headquarters.

But a spokesman for the school’s successor, The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, said neither was a degree program, meaning Vasquez could not be counted as a graduate.

Ruiz also noted that Southcom learned of the coup no earlier than greater Miami. First word broke at the headquarters, he said, at 9:03 a.m. EDT Sunday when The Associated Press reported it.

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