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Honduras - coup aftermath

Violence flares, ex-president swears he'll return

Article published on the 2009-06-30 Latest update 2009-06-30 14:39 TU

Policemen stand guard outside a hotel near the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa 30 June 2009. (Photo: Reuters/Henry Romero)

Policemen stand guard outside a hotel near the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa 30 June 2009.
(Photo: Reuters/Henry Romero)

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya vowed to return to Honduras as angry supporters clashed with riot police near the presidential palace here.

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Zelaya, speaking in the Nicaraguan capital, said, "I go to Tegucigalpa on Thursday."

In the capital, there was unrest on Monday as hundreds of Zelaya supporters, defying a government curfew on Monday, erected barricades near the presidential palace. They threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and used pipes and metal bars against shield-bearing riot police. The security forces cracked down with tear gas and gun-fire.

Several demonstrators and security forces were injured.

Politicians, business leaders, most communications media and a good part of the eight-million-strong population have applauded Zelaya's overthrow, despite the violent street protests. But Zelaya insists he remains the elected leader, and scores of young people, protested.

The military moved against Zelaya after he tried to hold a referendum on changing the constitution to allow him to run for a second term in elections in November.

The Honduran congress leader Roberto Micheletti, took over at the head of an interim administration on Monday, after Zelaya was forced out to Costa Rica by mutineering army officers, and immediately declared a 48-hour cease-fire.

Micheletti brushed off international condemnation of the takeover, insisting he "had come to the presidency not by a coup d'etat but by a completely legal process as set out in our laws," and promised elections in January 2010.

US president Barack Obama had told reporters on Monday that, "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there." Obama called for international cooperation to solve the crisis peacefully.

Zelaya is due to go to the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, after the UN condemned the coup.

The coup was almost uniformly condemned in Latin America, the United States and Europe.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Tuesday that his country and the European Union were considering recalling their ambassadors to Honduras, after the 22 countries of the Rio Group, an organization of 22 Latin American countries, plus Mexico and Chile recalled theirs.