Ousted Honduras president faces arrest on return

HONDURAS’S ousted president, bolstered by international support, said he will return home this week to regain control.

However, the man who replaced him said that Manuel Zelaya could be arrested when he arrives.

The military coup on Sunday provoked nearly universal condemnation from governments of the West, from US 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 that Organisation of American States secretary-general Jose Miguel Insulza had agreed to accompany him back to Honduras.

But the man named by the country’s Congress as interim president, Roberto Micheletti, indicated yesterday 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.

US President Barack Obama said: “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there.

“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 it was Zelaya who had violated the constitution and this court-ordered removal was legal.

“We have not committed a coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession,” he said.