BBC NEWS | Americas | UN backs Honduras leader's return ****

BBC NEWS | Americas | UN backs Honduras leader's return


Included are reports of the history of this issue.

The United Nations General Assembly has approved a resolution calling for the reinstatement of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

Mr Zelaya, 57, was ousted amid stiff opposition to his plans to amend the constitution from the courts, military, Congress and even some members of his own party.
He had wanted to hold a non-binding referendum on the proposal, which critics say could have paved the way for Mr Zelaya - elected in 2006 and restricted to only one term - to run for re-election.




Mr Zelaya's expulsion by the army on Sunday has been criticised in Europe, Washington and Latin America as a coup.

He says he will return to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the head of the Organization of American States.

Mr Zelaya, who also addressed the UN, thanked the assembly for what he called its "historic" resolution.

He also pledged not to seek another term in office once he has returned to Honduras, and said he would not accept a second term if he was asked to serve again.

The resolution calls "firmly and categorically on all states to recognise no government other than that" of Mr Zelaya.

It was co-sponsored by a group of Latin American and Caribbean nations and was supported by the United States.

n Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, newly-installed President Roberto Micheletti defended the ousting of Mr Zelaya, whom he accused of a "Chavismo" style of socialism based on that of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

In an interview with Reuters news agency he said Honduras was "more of a democracy today than it was three days ago".

And Enrique Ortez, Honduras' new foreign minister, said Mr Zelaya faced immediate arrest if he returned, on charges of violating the country's constitution as well as links to drug trafficking and organised crime.

"As soon as he enters he will be captured. We have the warrants ready so that he stays in jail in Honduras and is judged according to the country's laws," Mr Ortez told CNN's Spanish-language service.

Anti-Zelaya protest

In recent days pro-Zelaya supporters have clashed with security forces in Tegucigalpa, but on Tuesday thousands of opponents of the deposed president demonstrated in the city centre.

Waving the national flag, they said he had been legally forced from office.

Mr Zelaya, 57, was ousted amid stiff opposition to his plans to amend the constitution from the courts, military, Congress and even some members of his own party.

He had wanted to hold a non-binding referendum on the proposal, which critics say could have paved the way for Mr Zelaya - elected in 2006 and restricted to only one term - to run for re-election.

Polls had been due to open on Sunday, but instead troops stormed the presidential palace at dawn, bundled the president to an airbase and flew him to Costa Rica.

The BBC's Stephen Gibbs, in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, says Mr Zelaya, whose popularity in Honduras had been plummeting in recent months, has garnered impressive support since his exile.

Our correspondent notes that even US President Barack Obama and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have found themselves in rare agreement over the issue - with both declaring that his expulsion was illegal.

A number of countries in the region have withdrawn ambassadors from Honduras.

Spain, the former colonial ruler of Honduras, has called on other EU countries to withdraw their ambassadors - Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said member states had "not ruled out" the option.

Meanwhile, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the institution had "put a pause" on its lending to Honduras.

Mr Zoellick said the bank was "working closely with the OAS and looking to the OAS to deal with its handling of the crisis under its democratic charter".

The authorities in Honduras have been restricting broadcasts by media outlets perceived to be pro-Zelaya, our correspondent adds.



From BBC

Last Saturday night, when President Manuel Zelaya went to bed in his official residence, he must have felt at least an inkling of the loneliness of power.

In the few days previously, the Supreme Court had twice accused him of acting illegally. His attorney general had said he should stand down. He had sacked his chief of defence staff. The heads of the army navy and air force had all resigned.

Despite all that, he apparently slept well.

But not for long.

He was rudely awoken before dawn as masked soldiers entered the private quarters of the man that still, at that stage, was officially their commander-in-chief.

Now the soldiers were giving the orders. The president was marched out of his house and taken to a nearby military airport. Still in his pyjamas, he was forced to board a plane.

By the time it took off, he still had no idea where he was being taken, or what his fate might be.

The destination was Costa Rica, and enforced asylum.

'No hero's welcome'

It might have seemed like his darkest hour. But President Zelaya has instead found himself an unlikely hero with some powerful champions.

"President Zelaya was democratically elected. He has not completed his term," stated US President Barack Obama.

"This is a coup against us all," said Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez, who has vowed to do what he can to restore the sometime cattle rancher to power.

Mr Zelaya now says he will be returning to his home country on Thursday.

If he is expecting a hero's welcome, he might be disappointed.

The new Honduran government, which remains unrecognised by any country in the world, has said the exiled president is now a regular citizen and should expect to be arrested and imprisoned if he returns.

Popularity plummeted

But what of the Honduran people?

Recent events in Tegucigalpa, with hundreds of protesters chanting the president's name have proved that he has his fanatical supporters.

"He is the democratically elected president of Honduras. He was kidnapped by criminals," said Paulina, a primary school teacher, as she hurled insults at the soldiers currently occupying the presidential palace.

But in the weeks before he left the country, Mr Zelaya's popularity was in fact plummeting. One survey put it at about 30%.

"We saw this coming around six months ago," said Miguel, a lawyer as he watched protesters build a barricade of burning tyres in the centre of the capital.

"Zelaya, for some reason, became a radical," he said.

'Expertly planned'

Perhaps seeking inspiration from President Chavez in Venezuela, Mr Zelaya, who said Honduran democracy grossly favoured the country's wealthy elite, began to turn his attention to the constitution.

It currently allows presidents to only sit for one term of four years. Mr Zelaya's presidency was due to expire next January.

His efforts to alter the situation would appear to have been relatively modest.

Last Sunday, he was attempting to push what was in effect a referendum about whether a future referendum would take place on rewriting the constitution.

But Mr Zelaya's enemies it seemed, wanted to stop the process in its inception. And they had powerful institutions on their side: the Supreme Court, the Congress, the army.

The removal of President Zelaya was expertly planned and orchestrated.

Yet, for its proponents, it might have been disastrously mistimed.

They are now left in nominal charge of a country. Their nemesis has been turned into a symbol of Central America's long, unhappy, struggle against military dictatorship.

And questions remain as to whether, assuming it was his intention, he really could have altered the Honduran Constitution in order to prolong his rule.

Even highly popular leaders, such as Hugo Chavez, have discovered that such an undertaking is not always successful.

Might the generals and judges and politicians who decided that Manuel Zelaya had to go, now be wondering whether they would have been better off doing nothing?


HISTORY ON THIS ACTION BY THE BBC



President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras has been ousted from office and sent into exile amid a power struggle over his plans for constitutional change.

It is the biggest political crisis in Central America in years and has provoked widespread international condemnation.

What exactly happened?

At dawn on 28 June, between 200 and 300 troops came to Mr Zelaya's home, and, in his own words, told him to surrender or they would shoot him.

He was driven to the airport and put on a flight to Costa Rica. Later on Sunday, the speaker of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, constitutionally second in line to the presidency, was sworn in as interim leader.

What provoked Mr Zelaya's removal?

Mr Zelaya planned to hold a non-binding public consultation on 28 June to ask people whether they supported moves to change the constitution.

This would in practice have meant holding a referendum at the same time as November's presidential election on setting up a body charged with redrawing the constitution.

Mr Zelaya's critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, and paving the way for his possible re-election.

The consultation was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and Congress, and was opposed by the army.

Were the weekend's events a surprise?

To a certain degree, yes. Coups and political upheaval were common in Central America for much of the 20th Century, and until the mid-1980s the military dominated political life in Honduras.

Mr Zelaya's removal is the first in the region since 1993, when Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano was forced to step down by the military.

Nevertheless, tension had been brewing in Honduras over recent months. Last week Mr Zelaya sacked the head of the armed forces, who refused to give logistical support for Sunday's vote. The Supreme Court overruled him, saying the army chief should be reinstated.

When Mr Zelaya insisted the referendum would go ahead, Congress voted to remove him for what it called "repeated violations of the constitution and the law", and the Supreme Court said it had ordered the president to be removed from office to protect law and order.

But why were relations between the president and the other institutions so strained?

Honduras is a poor country beset by corruption, with a huge wealth gap and widespread gang violence. However, it had been politically-stable since the 1980s.

But Mr Zelaya, who came to office in 2006, had been moving the country steadily leftwards, enjoying the support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other left-wing leaders in the region.

This appears to have alarmed certain sectors in Honduras, who decried his plans for constitutional change as an attempt to stay in power.

For his part, Mr Zelaya argued that the consultation on Sunday would merely have been a survey: a canvassing of public opinion, not a legally-binding election. He told the BBC that legal disputes and political differences were no excuse for staging a coup.

What has been the reaction in Honduras?

Pro-Zelaya protesters have taken to the streets and there have been clashes with security forces.

It seems the majority of people are confused about what exactly has happened, and have complained about a lack of information. Several TV and radio stations are reported to have had their transmissions interrupted.

What has been the international reaction?

International condemnation was swift and near-unanimous.

The Organization of American States demanded Mr Zelaya's immediate reinstatement and was set to hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the crisis. Left-wing leaders, among them the Bolivian, Ecuadorean and Venezuelan presidents, gathered in Nicaragua to discuss the crisis and decided to pull out their ambassadors.

US President Barack Obama called for all in Honduras to respect democratic norms, but also stressed that "any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference".

In later statements, Mr Obama said he believed that the coup was not legal and that Mr Zelaya remained the democratically-elected president of Honduras.

However, Washington has not yet moved to cut off aid to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the region.