United Nations denies finding that Honduras’s President’s ouster was legal

Over on some of the blogs today, there is a rumor being spread that a key UN department completed a report finding that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was legal. A Spanish-language website from Honduras made the claim, without any proffered evidence. And some bigger fish in the blog food chain bit, albeit with some skepticism. Take Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air:

Bear in mind that Hondudario ran this in an editorial, at least as far as I can tell.  Nothing else has hit the wires about a UN determination in this crisis.   The UN’s DPA has a website, but does not have anything at all on the Honduran stand-off.

If this turns out to be true, though, it would come as a shock and embarrassment to the White House.  The Law Library of Congress has already reached the same conclusion, a development which the Obama administration has ignored, and which most of the media have studiously avoided mentioning.  A UN report backing Roberto Micheletti, the Honduran parliament, and Supreme Court would expose Obama’s knee-jerk conclusion and siding with democracy advocates such as the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez for the amateurish bungling that it was.

Sorry, guys, but it isn’t President Obama whose knee was jerking.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement to that effect today, explaining that an opinion was submitted to DPA by a consultant that made the finding, but that DPA had not issued any reports expressing the opinion of the United Nations:

A recent Honduran media report appears to refer to an analysis submitted by a consultant as representing the views of the Department of Political Affairs    This is highly misleading. The Department of Political Affairs routinely receives reports and analyses of this type from consultants, academics and other experts. But its views are strictly in line with that outlined in the General Assembly Resolution.

The General Assembly resolution Secretary-General Ban is referring to, 63/301 of July 1, condemned Zelaya’s ouster as a coup d’etat.

Mr. or Mrs. Consultant, if you are out there, feel free to share your report with me, and I’ll let the world see what your finding was that made the Honduran press so breathless with excitement that they couldn’t get around to explaining that your ‘report’ was just an opinion. But as it stands the UN and most of the world, save for a group of conservative political thinkers who are using Zelaya’s ouster as a tool to bash President Obama’s foreign policy, see this as the coup that it is.