Ousted Honduras leader fails in bid to return

TEGUCIGALPA, (Reuters) – Ousted Honduran President  Manuel Zelaya turned back from an attempted return home yesterday after soldiers clashed with his supporters as he tried  to land, fuelling tensions over the coup that toppled him.

Zelaya’s plane landed in neighbouring Nicaragua, after he  said initially his flight from Washington would divert to El  Salvador.
“Faced with this situation, we have to go on with what we  had planned, which is a meeting with the other presidents in  the region,” he told the Telesur news channel from the plane.

The coup has spiralled into Central America’s worst  political crisis in two decades, testing regional diplomacy and  raising a challenge for the Obama administration.
A senior U.S. official described the situation in Honduras,  an impoverished coffee and textile exporter, as “very fluid and  challenging.”
Honduras’ interim government, which has resisted growing  international pressure over the coup, refused Zelaya permission  to enter the country and warned he would be arrested. Hundreds  of troops fanned out around the runway to protect the airport.

Violence erupted after protesters broke through fencing at  the edge of the airport. Troops fired tear gas and clashed with  the rock-throwing crowd, Reuters witnesses said.
Zelaya, a leftist who had been due to leave power in 2010,  was pushed out of office by troops and flown into exile in  Costa Rica a week ago in a coup triggered by a dispute over  presidential term limits.

Leftist allies of Zelaya, including the presidents of  Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina, already had flown to El  Salvador yesterday to support him.
Underscoring regional tensions stoked by the ouster,  Honduran interim President Roberto Micheletti said small groups  of Nicaraguan troops were moving near their mutual border,  although they had not crossed it.

He urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a leftist ally  of Zelaya, to respect Honduran sovereignty.
Ortega, whose country shares a border with Honduras to the  south of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, called the charge of  troop movements toward the frontier “totally false.”
The Organization of American States earlier yesterday  suspended Honduras for refusing to reinstate Zelaya, the  strongest move yet by foreign governments to isolate the  country after Central America’s first coup since the Cold War.

Zelaya left Washington on a Venezuelan-registered chartered  plane, accompanied by U.N. General Assembly President Miguel  D’Escoto. But the aviation authority in Honduras said Zelaya’s  plane had been directed to go to El Salvador.

The interim government, installed hours after the coup last  week, argues the removal of Zelaya was justified by what it  views as his illegal attempts to extend presidential limits in  office beyond a single four-year term.

Micheletti’s government said it had contacted the OAS to  express its willingness to enter dialogue. But his foreign  minister Enrique Ortez said that offer would not include any  return to power by Zelaya.

“That is not negotiable,” Ortez said.
“We’re going to have to wait and see what is that they want  to talk about,” the senior U.S. administration official said.
But the official said the OAS was looking for a full  restoration of democracy, meaning allowing Zelaya to serve out  his term.
Zelaya, a businessman who edged to the left after he came  to power in 2006, upset traditional elites, including members  of his own Liberal Party, by seeking changes to presidential  term limits and by establishing closer ties with Venezuelan  President Hugo Chavez, the region’s tough-talking socialist and  a longtime adversary of the United States.
The OAS met in Washington and took the rare step to suspend  Honduras after the interim authorities ignored an ultimatum by  the 34-member body last week to reinstate Zelaya.