Word from the annual OAS General Assembly in Lima this week is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appealed to the hemispheric community to re-instate Honduras to full membership, but that a number of other hemispheric countries, notably Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, demurred.  After a year wandering in the hemispheric wilderness since being expelled from the OAS in 2009, Hondurans are wondering what they need to do, to paraphrase BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward, to get their lives back.  Indeed, duly-elected Honduran President Porfirio Lobo must be thinking right about now that he faces political difficulties approximating the Gulf oil spill, and that the clean-up efforts from last year’s coup ousting then-president Mel Zelaya are just as oily.

This week, from June 6 to 8, the Organization of American States (OAS) will hold its General Assembly with all the region’s foreign ministers and secretaries gathering in Lima to discuss affairs in the hemisphere....well, almost. Last year the theme of the General Assembly, held in Honduras, was supposed to be security, but the event was derailed by a movement to revoke Cuba’s suspension from the OAS. This year, it’s likely to be the return of the government of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa of Honduras to the OAS that will consume the attention of the gathered diplomats.

Different country, same divisions, on different sides. As with the outcome at the last OAS General Assembly, some artful diplomacy could produce a positive step that will finally--for the good of regional diplomacy and Honduras--help to move this process along.