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Zelaya vows to return despite looming arrest
Honduras' ousted president, bolstered by international support, said he will return home this week to regain control. The man who replaced him said on Tuesday that Manuel Zelaya could be met with an arrest warrant.
- AP
- Published: 22:51 June 30, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- Soldiers chase supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya after violence broke out near the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Monday.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Honduras' ousted president, bolstered by international support, said he will return home this week to regain control.
The man who replaced him said on Tuesday that Manuel Zelaya could be met with an arrest warrant.
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, Zelaya said late on Monday that Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza had agreed to accompany him back to Honduras.
But the man named by Honduras' Congress as interim president, Roberto Micheletti, indicated yesterday that Zelaya would risk arrest if he returns because "the courts of my country have issued arrest orders" against him.
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 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."
Micheletti, speaking to Colombia's Caracol Radio, insisted that it was Zelaya who had violated the constitution and that his court-ordered removal was legal.
"We have not committed a coup d'etat, but a constitutional succession," he said.
While Zelaya may face arrest warrants, Micheletti's foreign minister said the overthrown leader "is not banned from entering Honduras".
Enrique Ortez Colindres said yesterday that Zelaya would have to seek foreign ministry permission to enter the country, and "he would not be considered president, but a common citizen".
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