Estoril, Portugal - Ibero-American countries remained deeply divided over the Honduran elections Monday in Portugal, amid concern that they might not reach an agreement before wrapping up their summit on Tuesday. Conservative candidate Porfirio Lobo won Sunday's poll, which was staged by the de facto government despite ousted president Manuel Zelaya's call for an election boycott.
Some of the 22 countries attending the summit in the seaside resort of Estoril recognized the poll, while others dismissed it as illegitimate.
The summit would condemn the June 28 coup that toppled Zelaya, and demand his restitution as president while seeking an agreement with Lobo, Zelaya's Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas said.
But Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado said it was "difficult for the time being" to reach a consensus. Portugal and Spain did not exclude the possibility that the summit would not issue a statement on the situation in Honduras.
"Everyone condemns the coup," but there was disagreement about what that meant, Ibero-American General Secretary Enrique Iglesias said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his country would not recognize the elections and would continue hosting Zelaya at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa until he was given security guarantees.
Zelaya has been staying at the embassy since returning to Honduras from exile in September.
"This acts as a warning to other adventurers" who could violate the constitutional order in other Latin American countries, Lula da Silva said at the summit, which brought together 14 heads of state.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said the elections had taken place "in the most absolute illegality." But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said his country recognized them.
The elections had been transparent and free of fraud, Uribe told Colombian media.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon stressed the need to check whether the elections had really been transparent, while Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the elections had helped to install "a dictatorship" backed by the United States.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Spain "neither recognized nor ignored" the elections, explaining that Lobo would play a role in the search for a solution to the Honduran political crisis.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has mediated in the Honduran crisis, called on the international community to back the elections so that Latin America's second poorest country would not become "a kind of Central American Albania or Myanmar."
Other conflicts that were expected to be discussed at the summit included the row between Venezuela and Colombia over the United States' use of military bases in Colombia.
Latin America's leftist regimes had a lowered profile at the summit with the absences of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Raul Castro of Cuba.
The official motto of the summit was "Innovation and Knowledge" as it was meant to focus on ways to promote new technologies in Latin America.
The current financial crisis could create 39 million more poor people in Latin America, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a report made public at the summit.
The region had been "hard hit" by the crisis, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said, predicting that its gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by up to 1.9 per cent in 2009.
