Ousted Honduran President Vows Return
ROBERTS: Twenty-eight minutes after the hour. Checking our top stories. Investigators say they believe they have found the flight and voice data recorders of Yemenia Flight 626. A French official telling a CNN affiliate the location of the so-called black boxes has likely been pinpointed but they're not very accessible. The plane carrying 153 people crashed yesterday off of southeastern Africa. And we now know the sole survivor was not a 5-year-old child as previously reported. It is a 13-year-old French girl.</s>CHETRY: North Korea keeping us guessing. One of its ships that the U.S. has been tracking for more than a week making a U-turn. The U.S. suspects it could be carrying illegal weapons. Two U.S. officials tell the Associated Press that vessel had been moving very slowly in recent days, something that could signal it was trying to conserve fuel.</s>ROBERTS: Al Qaeda is threatening to take revenge on France for its position on women covering themselves head to toe with a burqa. That's according to a statement posted on radical Islamist Web sites. The statement appeared after French President Nicolas Sarkozy's controversial comment that the traditional Muslim garment was not welcome in France. The posting responded by accusing French women of being poorly dressed and nude.</s>CHETRY: And a nurse who says she treated Michael Jackson is breaking her silence. Speaking just moments ago to AMERICAN MORNING, Cherilyn Lee telling us that Jackson begged for the powerful sedative Diprivan, saying that he felt it was safe and that he would pay a doctor anything so that he could have it to get some sleep.</s>LEE: He said, yes, I know exactly what it is, I've had it before. And I said, this is not a safe medication. He said, no, my doctor assured me that it's safe. There's no side effect, he said. It is safe. He asked me, he said, can you find me a doctor? I don't care how much money they want, I don't care what it is they want, I want this drug.</s>CHETRY: Well, our Dr. Sanjay Gupta tells us Diprivan is sometimes used in low doses as a sedative, but most often it is used during surgery.</s>ROBERTS: Well, the message is clear -- leaders from nations in North and South America are telling those behind the recent coup in Honduras, put your deposed president back in power. President Jose Manuel Zelaya is vowing to return. So what does it mean for the future of Honduras and Central America? Joining me with more is Kevin Casas-Zamora. He's a senior foreign policy fellow with the Brookings Institution, also recently served as the vice president of Costa Rica. Kevin, it's good to talk to you this morning. So, President Zelaya is vowing to return. Originally, it was going to be tomorrow. Now it looks like he's not going to go back until at least Saturday. But Roberto Micaletti, who has assumed the presidency there says if he sets foot in Honduras, he's going to be arrested, tried and thrown in jail. He's really playing hardball here</s>KEVIN CASAS-ZAMORA, SENIOR FELLOW, BROOKINGS INSTITUTE: Thank you for having me here, john. My sense is that President Zelaya's idea of returning to Honduras immediately is probably a bad idea, and it's likely to make a bad situation worse. I think that some groundwork needs to be laid out before that happens. And by groundwork, I mean that the return to Honduras of President Zelaya won't solve anything, in and of itself. There's got to be some kind of political deal brokered before the underlying issue is tackled, and the underlying issue is how to make Honduras governable. Because in the end, it was not governable when President Zelaya was in power, and it is not governable now due to the immense international pressure that the new authorities in Honduras find themselves under.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. He was seeking changes to the constitution. He was trying to write them himself. He wanted another term in power. He has pledged that he's not going to pursue that any longer. Do you think that that might open the door for his return? Or is Micaletti hanging on so hard and fast to power he's never going to even let him back in the door?</s>CASAS-ZAMORA: My sense is that President Zelaya made all the right noises yesterday when he spoke at the general assembly of the U.N. and he indeed opened some avenues of dialogue and it remains to be seen whether the new authorities in Honduras are willing to respond in kind. If they don't, my sense is that the international community will keep cranking up the pressure and I really doubt that the new authorities in Honduras will be willing or able to pull off the North Korean or the Myanmar card...</s>ROBERTS: Right.</s>CASAS-ZAMORA: And remain as a pariah state for even seven months until the new government takes over. I don't think they'll be willing to do that.</s>ROBERTS: If they do, what's the effect in Central America? The president says he is very concerned about what happened there, he's called for President Zelaya to be reinstated. He says that we have to be careful about or worried about moving backwards to an area of military coups that changed governments in central America. We all remember what was going on during the 1970s and the 1980s, Nicaragua now taking a step backwards from democracy. So if the coup holds in Honduras, what's the net effect for central America?</s>CASAS-ZAMORA: It will be a terrible precedent. It will be a terrible precedent and that explains the very strong and coherent reaction that you - that we've seen all through the Americas, not only in Latin America. Because this is not only a question of Chavez, as some people have said, coming out very strongly against the coup. It's also President Lula from Brazil, President Calderon from Mexico, even President Obama, and that's quite remarkable because my sense is that this poses a golden opportunity for the U.S. to make a clean break with the past and come out very strongly on the side of democracy. So, yes, I mean the problem is that this situation in Honduras adds to a very volatile political situation in Central America. In Central America, it is really unraveling politically, in Honduras, in Nicaragua and in Guatemala, particularly.</s>ROBERTS: All right. We'll definitely keep watching very, very closely. Kevin Casas-Zamora, it's good to talk to you, sir. Thank you for joining us this morning.</s>CASAS-ZAMORA: Thanks for having me.</s>CHETRY: Next to Michael Jackson's situation, one of the things that a lot of people have been asking about is what of this memorabilia, I mean so much memorabilia...</s>ROBERTS: There is tons and tons of it, isn't there?</s>CHETRY: Right. What's the value now after Michael Jackson's untimely demise and passing?</s>ROBERTS: More than it was before.</s>CHETRY: Absolutely. We'll we're going to talk more about that coming up. Thirty-five minutes after the hour.