Honduras won’t let envoys into country
Officials limit civil liberties
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The de facto government of Honduras expelled four diplomats from the Organization of American States yesterday and threatened to shut down the Brazilian Embassy, where the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, has been holed up for a week.
The interim leaders also suspended key civil liberties, empowering police and soldiers to break up “unauthorized’’ public meetings, arrest people without warrants, and restrict the news media. The announcement came just hours after Zelaya called on supporters to stage mass marches today marking the three-month anniversary of the June 28 coup that ousted him. Zelaya described the marches as “the final offensive’’ against the interim government.
The diplomats were members of an advance team planning a visit of foreign ministers from member countries to try to negotiate an end to the political crisis. The organization had been invited by the de facto government to hold talks, then disinvited, and invited again before being turned back at the airport yesterday.
Carlos Lopez Contreras, the foreign minister of the de facto government, said yesterday that the group had arrived a day earlier than the government said it could. “They fell on us by surprise,’’ he said.
A fifth member of the team, John Biehl of Chile, was allowed to stay, Lopez said, because he was a key player in the Honduran crisis mediation in Costa Rica.
The government also gave Brazil a 10-day deadline to grant Zelaya political asylum or hand him over for trial on a catalog of charges including treason and abuse of authority.
Lopez said that if Brazil did not comply within 10 days, the embassy would lose its diplomatic status. “As a courtesy, we are not planning to invade the place,’’ he added.
The government’s actions yesterday, ostensibly aimed at keeping its grip on power, seemed to highlight its increasing isolation as the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, appears to lurch between hard-line stances and offers to negotiate.
The Brazilian government brushed off the threat. “Brazil will not comply with an ultimatum from a government of coup-mongers,’’ President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told reporters at a meeting in Venezuela.
