Rubio hosts Asfura as Honduras' leftist government resists recognizing election results
Both leaders discussed the "importance of combating transnational crime, strengthening regional security (...) and ending illegal immigration," Rubio's office reported.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Honduran President-elect Nasry Asfura
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, received on Monday the president-elect of Honduras, Nasry Asfura, in a context of high political tension, after a close election whose result the leftist government refuses to recognize.
The meeting between Rubio and Asfura, who during the campaign had the support of President Donald Trump, took place at the headquarters of the State Department and no questions were taken from the press.
A later statement from Rubio's office said the two leaders addressed the "importance of combating transnational crime, strengthening regional security (...) and ending illegal immigration," as well as the situation in Venezuela.
Asfura, 67, was proclaimed the winner on Dec. 24 of the Nov. 30 election, which was marked by Trump's intervention and unproven fraud claims by the ruling party and center-right candidate Salvador Nasralla, who was defeated by less than one percentage point.
The outgoing government of leftist Xiomara Castro promulgated a decree two days ago ordering the vote count to be completed, given that Asfura was declared president-elect with 97.8% of the vote. But the National Electoral Council (CNE) considered on Monday "unconstitutional and illegal" those directives.
Castro, for whom the electoral results are "vitiated of nullity" by the "interference" of the president of the United States, asked Trump on Saturday for a dialogue on the elections through "an audience or direct call."
The president also rejects Trump's early December pardoning of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, Asfura's co-supporter, when he was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
The White House has not officially reacted to Castro's demand for dialogue.
But Trump over the weekend posted on his Truth Social platform a lengthy article by one of his former advisers, Roger Stone, about the pardon. To justify the pardon, Trump indicated that people he trusted had explained to him that the case was a "set-up" and that Hernández was innocent.
This article was published with information from AFP
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