Ousted leader announces bid to return to Honduras

[June 30, 2009]  TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) -- 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 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 on Thursday after attending a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday 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 U.S. 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 in anti-riot gear used tear gas and rubber bullets to scatter protesters at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa. The demonstrators, many of them choking on the gas, 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 an Associated Press photographer in another area close to the palace saw protesters carrying away five injured people.

"In the name of God, in the name of the people, stop repressing the people," Zelaya said in Nicaragua, urging soldiers to return to their barracks.

Zelaya said more than 150 people were injured and 50 were arrested but added that he didn't "have exact figures, because I'm not there."

The loudest voice calling for Zelaya's return has been Chavez, who has urged a rebellion by the Honduran people.

"I'll do everything possible to overthrow this gorilla government of Honduras. It must be overthrown," the socialist leader said. "The rebellion in Honduras must be supported."

Chavez vowed to halt shipments of subsidized oil to Honduras, though the country gets most of its oil comes from other sources.

Mexico's conservative government joined the region's leftist leaders in pulling its ambassador from Honduras.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala would cut trade with neighboring Honduras for at least 48 hours.

The Organization of American States called an emergency meeting for Tuesday to consider suspending Honduras under an agreement meant to prevent the sort of coups that for generations made Latin America a spawning ground of military dictatorships.

Meanwhile, 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 immediately named a replacement president, Roberto Micheletti, to serve out the final seven months of Zelaya's term.

Micheletti vowed to ignore foreign pressure and began naming Cabinet members, including a new minister of defense.

"We respect everybody and we ask only that they respect us and leave us in peace because the country is headed toward free and transparent general elections in November," Micheletti told HRN radio.

Zelaya alienated the courts, Congress, the military and even his own party in his tumultuous three years in power but maintains the support of many of Honduras' poor.

Officers armed with rifles briefly detained four journalists from the AP and three from Venezuela-based Telesur at their hotel, loading them in a military vehicle and taking them to an immigration office, where two officials demanded to see their visas. The group was released a short time later.

Recounting his detention, Zelaya said Monday that said his daughter hid under her bed for 35 minutes after masked soldiers burst into his residence to search for him.

When they found him, he said, soldiers ordered him to drop the cell phone he was using.

He said the soldiers were shaking as they pointed their guns because they were "facing the president of the republic, and they knew it."

"I said, `I'm not going to drop it. If you have been ordered to shoot, then shoot,'" Zelaya said.

He said the soldiers simply yanked the phone from his hand.

Coups were common in Central America until the 1980s, but Sunday's ouster was the first military power grab in Latin America since a brief, failed 2002 coup against Chavez.

It was the first military ouster of a Central American president since 1993, when Guatemalan military officials refused to accept President Jorge Serrano's attempt to seize absolute power and removed him. They turned over power to a civilian within days.

Honduras had not seen a coup since 1978, when one military government overthrew another.

[Associated Press; By WILL WEISSERT and FREDDY CUEVAS]

Associated Press writers Marcos Aleman in Tegucigalpa, Kathia Martinez and Filadelfo Aleman in Managua, Nicaragua, Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.

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