(HONDURAS, PRESIDENT, ZELAYA, AMERICAN, LEADERS, CHAVEZ)
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras came under pressure on Monday to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya as many Latin American leaders agreed to withdraw envoys, Washington called his overthrow illegal and street protests turned violent.
Police in the Honduran capital fired tear gas at stone-throwing supporters of Zelaya, a leftist who was toppled in an army coup on Sunday and flown to exile in Costa Rica while a caretaker president was sworn in.
Some 1,500 protesters, some of them masked and carrying sticks, taunted solders and burned tires just outside the gates of the presidential palace in a face-off with security forces.
Zelaya was ousted over his push to extend presidential terms in Central America`s biggest political crisis since the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Honduras had been stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s.
Congress named Roberto Micheletti, a conservative-leaning veteran of Zelaya`s Liberal Party as interim president.
Honduras is a major coffee producer, expected to export some 3.22 million 60-kg bags in the 2008/09 season, but there were no immediate signs that output or exports were affected as ports and roads remained open.
Left-wing Latin American presidents led by Venezuela`s President Hugo Chavez said at a meeting in Managua, capital of neighboring Nicaragua, that they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon followed suit, as did leaders from Central America, also meeting in Managua, according to a diplomatic source. The Central American leaders also announced a two-day halt in trade.
Chavez said he would stop sales of cheap oil to Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textiles and banana exporter of 7 million people which joined his ALBA trade bloc of allies last year under Zelaya.
MICHELETTI SLIPS PAST PROTEST
Visibly bolstered by the sea of support for him, Zelaya said he would travel to Honduras on Thursday with Organization of American States (OAS) chief Jose Miguel Insulza.
"I am going to Tegucigalpa on Thursday. The president elected by the people is coming," Zelaya said. He said he had accepted an offer by Insulza to accompany him but gave no details of how he expected to pull the trip off.
Zelaya is due to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and travel to Washington on Wednesday.
Micheletti, who set himself up in the presidential palace despite the protests raging outside, told Reuters most Hondurans supported the coup, which had saved the country from swinging to a radical Chavez-style socialism.
"President Zelaya was moving the country toward `Chavismo`, he was following this model which is not accepted by Hondurans," he said in an interview, using a Spanish term for the style of socialism championed by Chavez. Continued...
Original article
No comments:
Post a Comment