Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) “delayed on Tuesday a committee vote to confirm the nominee to head the State Department’s bureau of western hemisphere affairs,” Reuters reports. He is “unhappy with U.S. policy on Honduras.”
Conservative Senator Jim DeMint, who has expressed concern over Washington’s call for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to be reinstated, invoked his right to ask the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone voting to confirm Arturo Valenzuela, currently a professor at Georgetown University, to be assistant secretary of state.
DeMint also asked for a delay in confirming Thomas Shannon as U.S. ambassador to Brazil. Shannon currently holds the assistant secretary’s post.
Both votes “had been set for Tuesday afternoon but are now likely to be held next week.”
DeMint and other Republicans have said they believe Hondurans were acting lawfully when they ousted Zelaya after he had sought to hold a referendum on overhauling the constitution to allow his re-election.
A spokesman for DeMint said on Tuesday the senator was also displeased at Valenzuela’s refusal to discuss Honduras at length during his nomination hearing.
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