Honduras vows to keep deposed president out Originally posted by on: Sunday, July 05, 2009
Last updated on: 7/5/2009 1:07:02 PMTEGUCIGALPA, Honduras: Authorities here closed the airport and restricted the airspace over the nation's capital in anticipation of deposed President Jose Manuel Zelaya's announced return Sunday.
The government of provisional President Roberto Micheletti has vowed to arrest Zelaya if he returns and has denied permission for Zelaya's plane to land.
Witnesses said the road to the airport in the capital of Tegucigalpa was closed.
Video showed dozens of pro-Zelaya demonstrators marching toward the airport.
The leftist Zelaya was ousted in a military-led coup one week ago, on the same day he planned to follow through with a referendum that the courts and the congress had ruled illegal and that the military said it would not support.
The Honduran Congress voted to strip Zelaya of his powers and named Micheletti as provisional president.
Sunday's political standoff follows a vote Saturday by the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras from the organization after the provisional government failed to respond to a 72-hour deadline to restore Zelaya as president.
In a resolution, the OAS had demanded Zelaya's return. After a visit to Honduras, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said he found Micheletti's government "extremely firm" and "inflexible." Micheletti and his supporters have repudiated the characterization of the transfer of power as a coup.
The provisional government maintains that the military action against Zelaya was backed by a court order and that arrest warrants have been issued against him for violating the constitution.
But Micheletti is swimming against world opinion. The U.N. General Assembly condemned the coup last week and demanded that Zelaya be reinstated.
The European Union and other nations have recalled their ambassadors from Honduras, and the United States and the World Bank have suspended some aid.
After 18 years of nearly uninterrupted military rule, Honduras returned to civilian control in 1981.
Since then, the military has not seemed interested in holding power in the nation of more than 7 million people, about 70 percent of whom live in poverty.
Military interventions were once common in Latin America, but civilian governments have held sway since the 1980s.
Before Sunday, the only other barracks revolt this decade was an unsuccessful 2002 coup attempt against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, when the military displaced him but backed down days later and allowed his reinstatement.
Talked with brother today. In a nutshell:
He has traveled the world extensively and said he doesn't recall as poor a country anywhere except in Africa. People make about $5 a day IF they can get work. Lovely people though.
He stayed in the capital on Friday night at the same hotel as all the people having the big pow wow there on Saturday. Lots of news people, al jazeer, to name one. Lots of people milling about.
He says the police are terribly corrupt. He is for sure glad to be home.
One more day and he wouldn't have been here til who knows when.
Gosh, hanna, so glad he's home. What an experience he had! Like you said ... had he not gotton out when he did, who knows when he would have been able to do so. EEK!
Thank God and Delta (or whatever airline) he's home!
By WILL WEISSERT and NESTOR IKEDA
,
AP
posted: 12 MINUTES AGO
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (July 5) -- Ousted President Manuel Zelaya was kept from landing at the main Honduras airport Sunday because the runway was blocked by military vehicles and groups of soldiers, some of them clashing with a crowd of thousands outside.
His Venezuelan pilot circled around the airport and decided not to risk a crash.
Zelaya instead landed in Nicaragua on his way to El Salvador, and vowed to try again Monday or Tuesday in his high-stakes effort to return to power in a country where all branches of government have lined up against him, including the military that shot up his house and sent him into exile in his pajamas a week earlier.
"I am the commander of the armed forces, elected by the people, and I ask the armed forces to comply with the order to open the airport so that there is no problem in landing and embracing with my people," Zelaya said from the plane. "Today I feel like I have sufficient spiritual strength, blessed with the blood of Christ, to be able to arrive there and raise the crucifix."
But interim President Roberto Micheletti insisted on preventing the plane from landing, and said he won't negotiate until "things return to normal."
"We will be here until the country calms down," Micheletti said. "We are the authentic representatives of the people."
Micheletti alleged that Nicaragua is moving troops in an attempt at psychological intimidation, and warned them not to cross into Honduras, "because we're ready to defend our border." Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called the allegation "totally false."
Violence broke out among the huge crowd surrounding the airport, with at least one man killed — shot in the head from inside the airport as people tried to break through a security fence, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene. At least 30 people were treated for injuries, the Red Cross said, after security forces fired warning shots and tear gas.
When Zelaya's plane was turned away, his supporters began chanting "We want blue helmets!" — a reference to U.N. peacekeepers.
Karin Antunez, 27, was in tears.
"We're scared. We feel sad because these coup soldiers won't let Mel return, but we're not going to back down," she said. "We're the people and we're going to keep marching so that our president comes home."
Zelaya said he would consult with the presidents of Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador and the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, who flew from Washington to El Salvador.
Zelaya won wide international support after his military ouster, but the presidents decided it was too dangerous to fly on Zelaya's plane, which carried only his close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister.
Honduras' new government has vowed to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since taking office in 2006. Zelaya also refused to comply with a Supreme Court ruling against his planned referendum on whether to hold an assembly to consider changing the constitution.
Critics feared Zelaya might try to extend his rule and cement presidential power in ways similar to what his ally Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela.
But instead of prosecuting him or trying to defeat him at the ballot box, his political opponents sent masked soldiers to fly Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, and Congress installed Micheletti in his place.
The military solution drew condemnation at the United Nations, and Honduras was suspended by the OAS. Many called it a huge step backward for democracy, and no nation has recognized the new government. President Barack Obama has united with Chavez and conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in insisting on Zelaya's return.
Without OAS membership, the isolated interim government faces trade sanctions and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized oil, aid and loans for the impoverished nation.
Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who has shifted to left during his presidency, has drawn most of his support from the working and middle classes, while his opponents are based in the ranks of the well-to-do.
Micheletti's vice foreign minister, Martha Lorena Alvarado, said the interim government sent the OAS a letter expressing "willingness to conduct conversations in good faith." In Washington, senior Obama administration officials took that as a positive sign.
Speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the State Department, the officials said the United States and other OAS member countries are coordinating contacts and outreach to facilitate a resolution, despite their insistence on having no formal relations with the interim government.
The immediate concern, however, was avoiding more bloodshed. Both critics and supporters of Zelaya have staged large demonstrations. The country's Roman Catholic archbishop and its human rights commissioner urged Zelaya to stay away to avoid provoking them.
Moments after Zelaya's plane was turned away, about a dozen trucks filled with police ordered everyone off the streets, imposing a sunrise-to-sunset curfew.
"This is a war," said Matias Sauceda, 65, a human rights activist. "Imagine — things are so bad, that the president is in the air and they don't let him land." Weissert reported from Tegucigalpa and Ikeda from Washington. Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas, Marcos Aleman and Esteban Felix in Tegucigalpa; and Robert Burns and Jeanneth Valdivieso in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
Cruise Line Fans: Cruise Forum, Reviews and Chat From Real Cruisers
-
Centrum Deck
-
Cruise Places
-
Roatan
-
Coup in Honduras?
#
That is good news, Hanna!
Glad they made it back safely! Thank goodness the airlines were still flying there and they were able to get out!
Excellent post, Sue! Certainly gives us a better idea of what's going on .... Thanks!
Linear Mode
