Ousted leader plans return to Honduras

As Zelaya addressed a supportive UN audience in New York, Hondurans in Tegucigalpa were demonstrating against and, in smaller numbers, in favor of the deposed leftist leader. Zelaya was flown to Costa Rica in exile early Sunday after soldiers removed him from his home.

Honduran Attorney General Luis Alberto Rubi, who clashed frequently with Zelaya, said arrest warrants had been issued accusing Zelaya of 18 crimes, including treason and abuse of authority. Rubi said authorities would ask Interpol to detain Zelaya, who has said he plans to return to Honduras tomorrow with a delegation of regional heads of state and other officials.

“The justice tribunals of my country have issued orders to capture [Zelaya] because he broke laws,’’ said Roberto Micheletti, the former head of Congress who legislators chose to replace Zelaya after the army deposed him.

In Washington, where the Obama administration has joined regional leaders in condemning the coup, US officials said yesterday they had severed contacts with the Honduran military, with which they maintained close ties for decades. The United States also will consider cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, officials said. To do so requires the administration to formally label Zelaya’s ouster a military coup.

In Tegucigalpa, the capital, several thousand opponents of Zelaya filled a downtown square waving blue-and-white Honduran flags and denouncing Zelaya’s ties to Latin leftists such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Repeatedly invoking God and fatherland, Micheletti thanked his followers “united here to protect democracy’’ and pledged to go ahead with presidential elections scheduled for the end of November.

He clasped the hand of General Romeo Vásquez, the army chief who Zelaya had tried to fire, and raised their arms overhead in a sign of victory. Micheletti said army officers were the heroes of the moment for having seized Zelaya from his bedroom Sunday morning and bundled him off into exile, still in his pajamas.

“It wasn’t a coup!’’ the crowd chanted. “Democracy, yes! Communism, no!’’

Most of the wrath seemed directed more at Chávez than at Zelaya. Chávez is seen as a heavy-handed bully by many, and his growing alliance with Zelaya made many Hondurans fear their country was being pulled to the radical left.

“I’m surprised that Barack Obama is not better informed,’’ retired colonel Natanael Guevara, 56, said, referring to US condemnation of the coup. “If Honduras falls, Central America falls and then Mexico. I’m ready to put my uniform back on.’’

Guevara was in the crowd rallying in favor of the new provisional government, along with businessmen, church people and others.

Meanwhile, major labor unions, who support Zelaya, declared strikes. Pro-Zelaya demonstrators staged a small march, a day after groups clashed violently with army and police forces.

Zelaya, 56, had angered the army, the courts, and congress - including his own party - for trying to change the constitution to allow the reelection of the president. He was six months shy of the conclusion of his own, tumultuous four-year term. Critics accuse Zelaya, a rancher and logging tycoon, of frequently flouting the law.

Enrique Ortez, the foreign minister appointed by Micheletti, told CNN’s Spanish-language network that Zelaya had been allowing planes to fly cocaine through Honduras from Venezuela to the United States. Honduras, like its neighbors, is an important transshipment point for tons of the drug.

Zelaya was unpopular at home, with approval ratings recently almost as bad as those of former president George W. Bush in his final months. But the coup has been condemned almost universally outside Honduras, including in a unanimous vote yesterday at the UN General Assembly.

The body, shortly before hearing Zelaya speak, voted that he should be reinstated without conditions. Other pressure on the impoverished, conservative country included a World Bank decision to freeze lending programs, and neighboring countries suspended trade.

Zelaya said at the UN that he would abandon the referendum he had been attempting to use to promote changes in the constitution, and that he would return to private life at the end of his term.

Although he has said before he had no plans to seek a way to be reelected, making the pledge before an international audience might have been a bid to reassure foreign supporters and ensure his reinstatement.

Zelaya said the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador, as well as the head of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, had agreed to accompany him on his return to Honduras tomorrow.

The logistics would be complicated, however, and the attempt could be disastrous for both sides. Analysts suggested Zelaya might be setting the date as a way to hasten international efforts to negotiate a settlement to the standoff.

“It’s rather obvious that the demand that Zelaya return makes sense,’’ said Kevin Casas-Zamora, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former vice president of Costa Rica.

But, he added, “The return of Zelaya won’t solve the underlying problem here, which is a huge governance problem. We’re talking about a guy who is at odds with virtually every institution and political actor in the country. He won’t be able to govern.’’