Ousted leader vows to return to Honduras

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-01 07:53

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras: Honduras' ousted president, bolstered by international support, said he will return home to regain control and he urged soldiers to stop cracking down on thousands of supporters who have protested his overthrow.

The military coup on Sunday provoked nearly universal condemnation from governments of the Western Hemisphere, from President Barack Obama to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and it sparked clashes in the Honduran capital that have left dozens of people injured.

Flanked by Latin American leaders who have vowed to help him regain power, Manuel Zelaya said late on Monday that he would accept an offer by Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza to accompany him back to Honduras.

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who has forged close ties with Chavez, said he wanted to return to Tegucigalpa tomorrow after attending a meeting of the UN General Assembly yesterday to seek support from its 192 member nations.

"I want the support of whoever thinks I have the right to finish my presidency," Zelaya said at a late night news conference in Nicaragua, where he earlier received a standing ovation during a meeting of Latin American leaders.

Just as significant was the support of the US president.

"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there," Obama said in Washington. "It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections."

It was unclear how Honduras' current leaders would react to Zelaya's return. They say he was lawfully ousted because he was sponsoring a referendum that illegally called for an assembly to write a new constitution. Many saw the foiled vote as a step toward eliminating barriers to his re-election, as other Latin American leaders have done in recent years.

Zelaya has called for supporters to stage peaceful protests in Honduras, and thousands answered the call on Monday.

Soldiers and police set up a chain link fence before dawn yesterday to seal off the area in front of the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa where thousands of protesters clashed with riot police the day before.

There were no signs of protests in the moments after a dusk to dawn curfew decreed by the new government expired.

Security forces on Monday used tear gas and rubber bullets to scatter protesters, who hurled rocks and bottles as they retreated. At least 38 protesters were detained, said Sandra Ponce, a government human rights official.

Congresswoman Silvia Ayala said she counted 30 injured at a single Tegucigalpa hospital and a witness in another area close to the palace saw protesters carrying away five injured people.

The replacement government insisted that no coup had taken place because the Supreme Court had ordered the army into action in response and Congress had named a replacement president to serve out the final seven months of Zelaya's term.

(China Daily 07/01/2009 page12)