WASHINGTON (AP) - The coup that deposed a U.S. ally in Honduras
exposed the small leverage that even millions of dollars in aid and
longtime military cooperation will buy.

Washington has few direct means to pressure those who packed
President Manuel Zelaya onto a plane out of the country on Sunday -
not the military leaders who carried out the coup or the civilian
lawmakers who backed it.

America's troubled history in Latin America, from power broker
with bloodied hands in coups past to seemingly indifferent
next-door neighbor in recent years, limits everything President
Barack Obama can do now.

Obama warned against a return to the "dark past" of coups and
instability in Latin America, but he is moving cautiously, and much
more slowly than many allies, to distance himself from what the
U.S. calls an illegitimate interim Honduran government.

Despite U.S. calls along with the U.N. and the Organization of
American States for Zelaya to be returned to power, the Obama
administration hasn't suspended some $45 million in annual aid or
trade perks - benefits that continue to flow to Honduras, a
reliable U.S. ally in a part of the world where American motives
are often considered suspect.

The U.S. also hasn't yanked its ambassador from Tegucigalpa,
even as all European Union ambassadors abandoned the Honduran
capital.

And even the administration's decision to suspend training
exercises and counter-narcotics operations with the Honduran
military - one of the few moves the White House did make this week
- is complicated by America's long-term reliance on Honduras as a
base and dependable Latin American partner. Those close ties, shown
in the scores of Honduran military officers who have trained in the
U.S. over the years, would not be severed easily.

Administration officials say they hope the weight of
international condemnation and the threat of economic isolation
will speed a political compromise that restores Zelaya to office.
In the meantime the U.S. is letting Honduras' Latin American
neighbors and international organizations play the heavy.

The State Department apparently was doing legal gymnastics this
week to avoid calling Zelaya's ouster a "military coup," since
that designation triggers automatic shutdowns of some aid.

"The legal review is ongoing," State Department spokesman Ian
Kelly offered Thursday. He said that in the meantime the U.S. has
moved to "hit the pause button" on programs that would be
affected.

Suspending U.S. economic and military aid would be a blow, but
Honduras' position as a significant exporter of textiles, bananas,
coffee and other goods to the United States isn't likely to change.
Trade between the two countries tops $7 billion annually and
Hondurans living in the United States sent home an estimated $2.5
billion on top of that each year before the current economic
crisis. That alone is more than a fifth of Honduran GNP.

The coup looked like a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s,
complete with apparently American-made M-16 rifles cradled by
soldiers whose leaders were trained at a notorious U.S.-funded war
school accused of countenancing atrocities.

The Pentagon put all but essential military cooperation on hold
this week.

"We have limited our contact dramatically, to what I would call
minimal contact with the Honduran military as the U.S. government
continues to evaluate and make judgments about the way forward,"
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Thursday.

More than 500 U.S. servicemen remain on duty at a Honduran air
base, however, and military officials said it is hard to imagine
the United States walking away from its investment in the expansive
Sota Cano complex.

More to the point it is hard to imagine the United States
shrugging off the effects, beneficial and corrosive, of decades of
military dealings with Honduras.

The United States has depended on close military ties to
Honduras for decades, using the Caribbean Central American country
as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" to launch missions against
the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and housing its major Central
American operations hub there today.

Frequent critics of U.S. policy in Latin America say the
political crisis could be an opportunity for Obama, who has pledged
a better relationship with Latin America.

"The United States has had a record in Honduras that is
probably the most negative in Central America," said Larry Birns,
director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "Now it is time
for redemption, and the United States has taken a very encouraging
first step" in saying Zelaya must be restored.
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EDITOR'S NOTE - Anne Gearan covers national security policy for
The Associated Press.