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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

DeMint hints at releasing holds, sees movement in U.S. policy on Honduras

Jim DeMint is ready to release his holds against two top administration Latin America appointees, the South Carolina senator told The Cable, and he predicts the State Department will soon recognize the upcoming Honduran elections as legitimate. In an exclusive interview, DeMint said he was seeing signs of movement from the State Department related to ...

By Josh Rogin

October 20, 2009, 9:48 PM

Jim DeMint is ready to release his holds against two top administration Latin America appointees, the South Carolina senator told The Cable, and he predicts the State Department will soon recognize the upcoming Honduran elections as legitimate.

In an exclusive interview, DeMint said he was seeing signs of movement from the State Department related to U.S. policy toward Honduras and that he had come close to an agreement over his hold in his meeting earlier this week with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon.

"We got a lot of agreement in the area of coming to terms with recognizing the upcoming elections there," DeMint said of his meeting with Shannon."That’s what I’m waiting for from our government, signals that we’re going to recognize those elections and move forward."

"I’m anxious to release both of the holds, but I’m not going to do that until I see some positive movements from the administration," he added.

DeMint is singularly holding up Shannon’s nomination to become ambassador to Brazil as well as the nomination of Arturo Valenzuela to take Shannon’s post. Shannon just returned from Honduras, where he met with de facto regime leader Roberto Micheletti as part of an Organization of American States delegation.

The State Department had been freezing out the Micheletti government, refusing to deal with its leaders directly and even pulling their visas to visit the United States. But as Micheletti gets closer to an agreement with ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, DeMint said the State Department would have no choice but to adjust its approach.

DeMint credited the congressional delegations that have visited Tegucigalpa, including one he led personally, with loosening the State Department’s stance. He predicted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would come out in support of the elections once the two sides in Honduras come to terms, but noted that Shannon wasn’t yet ready to go that far.

"He realized that it is essential that these elections go forward and are recognized," DeMint said of Shannon. "But he did not say they are ready to recognize them."

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin