The Threads of the Story: Surreal Honduras

By CLIFTON ROSS, CounterPunch, July 24 - 26 2009, issue

Gabriel Garcia Màrquez could easily have written "A Hundred Years of Solitude" in any country of Central America. It's a region replete with characters and magical landscapes and myths with power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck when you merely hear them. There's the one about the gringo who visited the mining region of Cabañas and soon thereafter the water turned bad and the fish in the river died and the people all began to die simply because a mysterious gringo passed through.

That's the story as Miguel Rivera tells it. His brother, Marcelo Rivera was the latest victim of the newly organized death squads, formed from what appears to be a triad of power: Pacific Rim (a Canadian multinational), the ARENA party (the political party organized by the death squad killer of Monsignor Romero, Roberto D'Aubuisson) and the "maras" or gang members.

Of course Miguel, who has a deep and even scientific knowledge of his locale, is aware that the myth is just that: a small story that reveals a larger, hidden truth, in this case that a "Gringo" multinational indeed entered the area, but the reason for the deaths was the heavy metal waste from the mining that was poured into the community's water.

In cultures and states where telling the exact truth can lead to one's death, it's always more convenient to wrap the story in myth. Those who unpackage the myths, like Marcelo Rivera, often disappear into thin air -- that is, until they're found, as he was, naked, castrated and murdered after being horribly tortured: his fingernails had all been pulled out; his face had been disfigured so much that his brother could only identify him by his nose; the beatings had broken his skull. Finally, after he had been strangled to death, his body was thrown in a sixty-foot well, covered with chicken manure, dirt, and pieces of meat.

The right wing press did, of course, repeat the official story that Marcelo had fallen in with "mara" gangsters and drank with them, but editors had the integrity to also print a counterpoint that everyone who knew Marcelo had quite clear: that the victim of the unholy triad of moneyed power in El Salvador never drank nor hung out with the maras. His hero was Monsignor Romero and Miguel says the last time he saw his brother he was wearing a t-shirt with the image of that martyr on it.

There's a significant difference between El Salvador under the FMLN where power in the media is actively being contested, and Honduras where there is a blackout of the opposition perspective. Another difference is that the ARENA party has lost control of the military and has to rely on "maras" to do its dirty work while in Honduras the government hasn't yet had to consider recruiting "civilian contractors" from the 100,000 or so "maras" operating in Central America. Thus far the military has been quite happy to do the job of eliminating or terrorizing opponents under the "golpista" Honduran government (coup government) of Micheletti. On July 5, for example, the military fired with machine guns on a crowd numbering in the thousands. This is the unofficial story, of course. The papers, including El Heraldo, claimed that the military had fired on the crowd with rubber bullets. Officially, also, only one person died. Protestors say that there were eight or nine victims who died on the way to the hospital, and whose bodies were disappeared. Given the machine gun fire, it's only surprising that more didn't die.

The Honduran government of the 1980s found it had no need to replicate the widespread massacres being carried out in El Salvador and Guatemala. It was able to selectively eliminate a couple hundred leaders of the opposition and take care of its problem with the "subversives." But in order to maintain control over the rest of the population and assure its docility and compliance, like anywhere else, it required a press willing and able to cloak a damning reality in a less threatening myth.

Once again Honduran reporters are being called in to do overtime in psyops. Granted, the press in Honduras under the "golpista" government isn't any worse than Fox News. That being said, everything having to do with the news around the recent "golpe" (coup) has a quality that ranges from surreal interpretation to black propaganda. It would seem that the journalists of the major papers of Honduras really were frustrated writers of dystopian science fiction.

One Honduran tells me she saw a murder in her neighborhood that was multiplied in the journalistic alchemy of the Honduran press by six the following day. I keep that in mind as I sit here in my hotel room in Tegucigalpa, leafing through what my wife back home would call "the daily pack of lies."

As I try to discern the Honduran narrative of the "golpe" I recall the copy of the article I left behind in El Salvador, printed in a right wing paper -- and, unfortunately, the newspapers are all right wing in El Salvador, with the exception of the Diario Co-Latino, the latter a blessing not bestowed upon Honduras. The Salvadoran article was based on a piece that appeared in Honduras' El Heraldo. The author claimed to have in possession secret documents that indicated that President Hugo Chavez was working with a large number of "maras" who he was arming and paying, and also infiltrating his own military to do a lightning attack and kill high-ranking officials of the Micheletti government. Supposedly residents have seen armed men in inaccessible regions of the country. Does that sound like the narrative of "Al Qaeda sleeper cells" doped up on the Koran ready to attack Bush's America? Only the names, places and drugs of choice have changed.

I'm looking here at a full page ad in La Tribuna from Tuesday, the 21st, paid for by "Hondurans for Democracy." There is a photo, in the top half, of Chavez aiming a gun. Beside the photo is the caption "Chavez calls for violence and wants bloodshed in Honduras" Beneath that picture is a crowd shot of Hondurans dressed in white (the color of the Conservative Nationalist Party) and holding the blue flags of Honduras. The caption reads, "But Hondurans want peace, unity, democracy and freedom." Ah, behold the foreign devil who has brought death to our peaceful little country. It's a variation on the diabolic gringo myth, but in reverse, since Chavez has been a counterforce to the "deadly gringo."

The following day, (Wednesday, July 22) El Heraldo has an interview with Alejando Peña Esclusa, a right wing Colombian who is president of UnoAmerica, described as "a democracy organization (sic: organización democracia) of Colombia." The headline reads, "The FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), Narcotrafficking and ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas) are all the same thing." The surrealism doesn't end with the title, which makes laughable connections between a program of solidarity created by Venezuela to share its wealth with loans and grants to Latin America to facilitate growth and development, and narcotics trafficking and a guerrilla that, while it taxes the cocaine trade, seems to have fewer connections to the actual trade than does the Uribe government.

Esclusa develops his surreal story in this large-spread article on page 6: He says that the coup "has kept Honduras from falling into the project of Hugo Chavez and saved democracy from the Constitutional coup which Zelaya hoped to undertake." What was the "Constitutional coup" Zelaya was plotting? To bring people more deeply into the political process of the country by asking them if they'd like to write a new constitution. So according to Esclusa, the military coup was a way of saving "democracy" by taking it away. And the project of Chavez, well, ask 60-70% of Venezuelans who support Chavez and they'll tell you that his project is to move the country from "representative to participatory democracy." But the interview with Esclusa gets even wilder: "the principle element of the disturbances in Honduras is not "Mel" Zelaya nor the discussion of whether or not he returns" (this would come as a surprise to the hundreds of thousands of people marching daily in Honduras for the single purpose of having their president return) "but it is Hugo Chavez who finances the dirty campaign, buying minds ("conciencias") so as to disinform about Honduran reality."

Again, the utterly implausible charge that Chavez, and not the golpistas, is behind all the country's problems. For Esclusa, the solution is simple: Isolate Chavez from Honduras and all the problems will be solved.

What's fascinating about this analysis is that there's not even a hint of truth in it. First of all, the marches aren't financed by anyone but the marchers. And secondly, the only Venezuelan I've seen has been an old friend who is a documentary filmmaker--and probably the last Venezuelan journalist in the country since Telesur was chased out. Noticeably absent from the marches is even the slightest mention of Chavez or Venezuela, neither of which appear in any of the chants, placards, discussions, programs, or anything else. There's only one message: "Golpistas Leave! Bring Mel Home."

In this surreal world where Chavez is working with narco gangsters and infiltrating along the coast, paying people to demonstrate, the poor golpistas are also unfairly being persecuted by "the OAS, UN and the international community."

This line was repeated to me the other day in the hotel by the woman behind the desk, who identified herself as a National Party supporter. She almost whined as she told me that "everyone is against us." Does that sound a little paranoid? When a sane person is told that everyone is opposed to what he or she is doing, that person begins to reflect again on his or her actions. Not so Micheletti; not so Mr. Esclusa; not so the National Party and Liberal Party members who went out on the 23rd on the march for "peace, unity, democracy and freedom."

Then the bombshell: According to Mr. Esclusa, the FARC, a guerrilla force of 30,000 with shrinking power, is the force behind all the presidents who are part of ALBA which is, in turn, a project of the FARC and financed by cocaine money.

If this were the ravings of a madman in the street, we could afford to ignore him. But this interview is published in one of Honduras' two major newspapers, with big headlines, a photo of Esclusa, on page 6. And obviously the government is taking this same paranoid siege narrative seriously because on page eight is the story and headline, "Honduras Breaks Diplomatic Relations with Venezuela" and the subhead reads, "Venezuelan officials, in a confrontational attitude, warn they won't leave the country. The [Honduras] Chancellor cancels the consular visa of Iranians for fear of terrorism."

Now that's interesting. Honduras breaks relations with Venezuela and it's Venezuela that is being confrontational. Takes you back to the bad old days of Bush and the Saddam Hussein "menace" doesn't it? Then there are the Iranians, whose government has never so much as threatened anyone in Latin America, yet who now "feared as terrorist." Wild rumor, speculation on a fantastic level: Vice Chancellor Marta Lorena Alvarado says that "we've confirmed the existence of terrorist Iranian cells in Latin America and considering that there are direct trips from Teheran... to Venezuela and from Venezuela to Nicaragua... there's concern that there's been a terrorist incursion into [Honduras]."

Here we've definitively returned to the bad old days of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush with the Amber, Yellow and Orange alerts when supposed "sleeper" cells that were never uncovered or identified were sleepwalking the US.

These are but a few of the jewels from the Honduran press. You could do with it as I did when I first confronted it in the hotel with the woman behind the desk: you could try reasoning with it. You could, as I did, say, isn't the very definition of a coup when an elected representative is removed from office and, rather than being held and tried and convicted or returned to office, is sent out of the country into exile at gunpoint. But the response is just as wild: "They were trying to prevent bloodshed. If they kept him here, his followers would cause bloodshed." But we're to believe that the people who sent the military to the airport on July 5th to machine gun protesters are really concerned about bloodshed? By the look on the woman's face, a gringo has come to town and poisoned the water.

Clifton Ross is the writer and director of Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out and Translations from Silence, a book of poetry introduced by Jack Hirschman available at: www.freedomvoices.org. He can be reached at: clifross@gmail.com

CENTRAL AMERICA: Shades of Coups Past - And Yet to Come?

By Raúl Gutiérrez, ipsnews.net, July 17, 2009

SAN SALVADOR, Jul 17 (IPS) - If the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti remains in power in Honduras, the Central American right may be encouraged to stage further coups against the fragile democracies that have emerged in the region over the last two decades, analysts warn.

The forces of democracy and the international community must continue to exert pressure to reestablish the constitutional order and enable ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, whose term ends in January, to return to office, experts from different countries in the region told IPS.

Ernesto Rivas Gallont, former Salvadoran ambassador in Washington from 1981 to 1989, says the Honduran civic-military coup will have profound implications for several Central American countries if Micheletti's grip on power is consolidated.

"If those who perpetrated the coup prevail in Honduras, there is no doubt that it will embolden the Central American right," the former diplomat told IPS.

"It's hard to admit, but (Fidel) Castro and (Hugo) Chávez are right" to fear that if the coup-mongers consolidate their power, "a series of coups d'état could be unleashed against governments in the region," Rivas Gallont wrote in his blog, referring to statements by the former Cuban president and the Venezuelan president in early July.

"It is only too obvious that the coup has exacerbated differences between left and right, and not just in Honduras," he said.

Zelaya was taken at gunpoint from his house in his pajamas by about 200 troops in the early hours of Jun. 28 and put on an air force plane to Costa Rica. The coup d'état was engineered by the Honduran military, the leadership of the two traditional political parties, and big business.

The ousting of the president came after weeks of political arm-wrestling over the Zelaya administration's plans to hold a non-binding popular vote on constitutional reform on that very day. But analysts say Zelaya was overthrown because of some of his social policies, and his alignment with more radical leftwing governments in Latin America.

The "survey," as Zelaya called it, which could not be legally held because plebiscites and referendums are banned in an election year, would have asked people whether they were in favour or against creating a constituent assembly to amend the country's constitution. Had the "Yes" vote won, assembly delegates would have been elected in the Nov. 29 presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

Pro-coup sectors say Zelaya wanted constitutional reform in order to seek reelection, prohibited by the Honduran constitution, in order to stay in power. The ousted president says that was never his intention, nor was it mentioned in the survey question.

Micheletti, who led the political movement for the military overthrow of the democratic government as former president of Congress, says he will not bow to international pressure. Today he is the interim president of a government that has not been recognised by a single country and has been universally condemned.

The United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Union, the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), among others, have all condemned the coup in Honduras and vigorously demanded Zelaya's reinstatement as the constitutional president.

In contrast, and in spite of these strong pronouncements, only "the Central American right has justified the coup, using Chávez as a pretext," IPS sources said.

For instance, they said, rightwing sectors in El Salvador have recently been supplanted in government after decades in power by the formerly-guerrilla leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). "They may be tempted to carry out actions similar to what happened in Honduras, of the kind that have marked our history," they warned.

The rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, which governed El Salvador from 1989 up to June this year, and is now in opposition, deplored Zelaya's "exile" but did not condemn the coup.

"It is also true that President Zelaya committed serious constitutional violations that led other state bodies" to remove him from office, says a paid ad by ARENA published in the Salvadoran media in early July.

The ad also urges Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes to "refrain" from interfering in the Honduran crisis, arguing that "it could affect relations between the two countries."

The Funes administration issued an immediate condemnation of the coup, and two days later at a SICA meeting in Managua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua agreed to close their borders with Honduras for 48 hours Jul. 1-2, as a way of exerting pressure on the de facto Micheletti government.

SICA is made up of all the Central American countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The Dominican Republic is an associate member.

Funes also hosted Presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Zelaya, as well as U.N. General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto and OAS Secretary-General Miguel Insulza, who waited in San Salvador in solidarity with Zelaya during his failed Jul. 4 attempt to return to Honduras.

Some members of the business community, political leaders and columnists for conservative Salvadoran media outlets have said Funes should learn from what has happened in Honduras, and not attempt to introduce constitutional reforms like Zelaya's.

Salvadoran analyst Leonel Gómez agreed with Rivas Gallont that events in Honduras could lead to more coups against democracies in the region.

"The danger here is that it might motivate other forces to perpetrate other coups d'état like the one in Honduras," said Gómez, who has participated in investigations of corruption and the supply of funds to dictatorships in the region with U.S. Democratic lawmakers Patrick Leahy and the late Joe Moakley.

The expert said that some Guatemalan military officers "would be delighted to receive orders to do the same thing" as their Honduran colleagues.

Centre-left Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom publicly denied that a military coup was being plotted in his country, after Chávez warned of the danger of an overthrow attempt. But Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú said vested economic interests in Guatemala could be planning to undermine the rule of law.

Recalling that in the past U.S. governments have "written dark chapters in the history of Central America" through their support for military dictatorships and coups d'état, Gómez urged the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to "act with greater firmness and in accordance with its principles."

The day after Zelaya was deposed, Obama said "the coup was not legal" and that Zelaya "remains the democratically elected president" of Honduras.

With the exception of Costa Rica, the countries of Central America were governed by military regimes during most of the 20th century. In most cases these regimes were imposed by powerful economic interests in collusion with conservative politicians and with assistance or direct intervention by the United States.

In the 1980s and 1990s civil wars broke out between leftwing guerrillas and the armed forces.

According to historians, Costa Rica escaped the general trend largely because of the abolition of the army, announced by then president José Figueres (1948-1949, 1953-1958, 1970-1974) on Dec. 1, 1948. The measure came into force in 1949, in spite of an attempted military coup to prevent it.

Meanwhile in Honduras pro-Zelaya protesters are blocking highways, the curfew has been reimposed, and talks in Costa Rica between Micheletti's and Zelaya's envoys, mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, are in a deadlock.

Honduras coup leaders shut main airport

Move aimed at preventing ousted leader Manuel Zelaya from returning following previous military blockade on runway
By Rory Carroll, guardian.co.uk, July 6, 2009

Coup leaders in Honduras shut the country's main airport today to block President Manuel Zelaya making another attempted return a day after military vehicles prevented his jet from landing.

The interim government, increasingly isolated and beleaguered, banned all flights for 24 hours to try to keep the exiled leader out and to dampen fresh protests by his supporters.

Zelaya promised yesterday to make another attempted return from neighbouring El Salvador today or tomorrow but US officials suggested he may instead fly to Washington for talks with the Obama administration and Latin American diplomats.

The Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, remained tense. Zelaya's supporters promised to mobilise fresh demonstrations despite bloody clashes with security forces yesterday. Soldiers opened fire on a crowd marching towards the airport, killing at least two, the first fatalities in the eight-day-old crisis.

Hospitals admitted many more people with gunshot wounds and staff told reporters there was an increasing number of victims shot by the military during the nightly curfew.

Zelaya, speaking at a news conference in El Salvador, appealed to the army to avoid further casualties. "I call on the armed forces of Honduras to lower their rifles."

The leftist leader was flanked by the presidents of El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador and the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza. "I am risking myself personally to resolve the problems without violence."

He urged the United Nations, the OAS and European Union to "do something with this repressive regime".

The interim government, which took power on 28 June after soldiers seized Zelaya in his pyjamas and bundled him into exile, slightly softened its position and said it wanted to negotiate with the OAS. But it ruled out Zelaya's return to power. "We will be here until the country calms down," said the interim president, Roberto Micheletti. "We are the authentic representatives of the people."

The coup was supported by those Hondurans who feared Zelaya's leftist agenda and alliance with Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez. But the new government has been denounced internationally. The OAS suspended Honduras, the World Bank froze lending, the EU recalled its ambassadors and the US cut diplomatic and military contacts.

The impoverished coffee-exporter of 7 million people has become dangerously polarised between the poor and working class, who tend to support Zelaya for his social programmes, and the middle class and institutions such as congress, the Catholic church and the military who consider him a dangerous radical who wanted to perpetuate himself in power.

From a clandestine location, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquel, who was culture minister in the ousted government, told the BBC that Honduras risked sliding into civil war.

"It is a terrible situation, a dangerous impasse. In the 1970s we had groups of guerrillas but they were always isolated, the country never felt in danger of civil war. Today there is the risk because both sides have a wide social base, they are completely polarised and they have weapons and resources."

The interim government said if Zelaya did manage to return he would be arrested for 18 alleged criminal acts including treason and corruption.

The OAS suspension will complicate Honduras' access to multilateral loans but so far its economy, heavily dependent on coffee exports, aid and remittances, has not suffered trade sanctions.

The interim government said it was prepared to hunker down until November when a presidential election would select a new leader - under the constitution Zelaya cannot run for a second term - and supposedly end the crisis.

Zelaya Confirms Meeting Today In Washington With Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton

Day 8: Update 10PM: Zelaya Arrives To El Salvador; Confirms Meeting Tomorrow In Washington With Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton
By Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 5, 2009

President Zelaya has arrived safely to San Salvador, reuniting with the heads of state from Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay, and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza. They are expected to meet tonight and discuss alternatives to President Zelaya's return to Honduras, after his first attempt was thwarted by the coup forces that impeded his landing in the Tegucigalpa airport by placing army vehicles and personnel on the runway.

A confirmed meeting is taking place tomorrow in Washington, D.C., between President Zelaya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Zelaya is expected to fly early tomorrow to the US capital. Clinton will most likely seek to negotiate some kind of agreement between the coup forces and President Zelaya in order to ensure his safe return and reinstate constitutional order.

Nevertheless, there are many concerns that Washington is looking to support its allies in Honduras, primarily those in the business and military sector who have been heavily involved in this coup, while trying to "save face" and project a "positive" non-interventionist image of Obama in Latin America. However, many question the late response by the Obama administration to the military coup, now a week in the making, and the outright lack of condemnation by Obama and Clinton regarding human rights violations committed by the coup government and repression of press freedoms. No comment has been made by Washington regarding the forced national curfew imposed by the coup government, which is now from 6pm through 6am, the suspension of constitutional rights, the censoring of media outlets not favorable to the coup, the detaining and persecution of journalists and members of Zelaya's cabinet and family, and the dead and wounded at the hands of the coup military forces. There are also questions regarding Washington's ambiguity to the coup, refusing to initially classify the events as a coup d'etat under US law, which would require immediate suspension of economic and military aid to Honduras.

No deal should be cut with the coup forces in Honduras, and by no means should Zelaya or the people of Honduras permit "early elections", which is one of the "ways out" that Clinton may push for tomorrow.

***************
From SOA Watch:

It remains vital that people in the U.S. keep maximum pressure on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and on President Barack Obama urge them to take action for the unconditional reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya.

Call Hillary Clinton's office at 202-647-5548.
Call the White House at 202-456-1111

Click here to send a message to the State Department and to President Obama.

And click here to send message to media, UN, etc.

Day 8: Coup Government Shuts Down All Airports In Honduras To Impede President

By Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 5, 2009

The de facto coup government in place in Honduras since last Sunday's coup d'etat has militarized the international airport outside the capital city of Tegucigalpa and shut down all other airports in the country. Letters were received by the Embassies of Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador from the coup government, denying authorization for airplanes to land in Honduran airspace carrying the heads of state from those nations.

Protesters against the coup government and in favor of President Zelaya's return are gathered around the airport in Tegucigalpa, awaiting their constitutional president's arrival. They have reported snipers are stationed all around the airport, apparently ready to fire at any airplane that enters the area.

President Zelaya is announcing right now from Washington, where he arrived last night to attend the extraordinary Organization of American States (OAS) meeting that resulted in the suspension of Honduras from the multilateral group until constitutional order is reestablished, that he will return today to his country, accompanied by two different delegations. The first delegation will be compromised of President Zelaya and the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) Miguel D'Escoto. They will arrive directly in Tegucigalpa. The second delegation will be the Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza, together with President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The second delegation will land first in neighboring El Salvador.

It is unclear still how President Zelaya's airplane will enter Honduran airspace considering the coup government has militarized the nation and placed an order prohibiting the arrival of his airplane. The flight from Washington is four hours, so he should be entering Honduras around 4pm EDT, approximately. Either the plane will be shot down or President Zelaya will be taken prisoner by the military coup forces upon arrival.

Honduran military told to turn back Zelaya's jet

By WILL WEISSERT and NESTOR IKEDA, AP, Yahoo! News, July 5, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Honduras' exiled president took off for home in a Venezuelan jet in a high-stakes attempt to return to power, even as the interim government told its military to turn away the plane.

Zelaya won wide international support after his ouster a week ago by the military, but the only prominent escort aboard his plane was the U.N. General Assembly president after Latin American leaders backed out, citing security concerns. Honduras' civil aviation director said Zelaya's plane was being redirected to El Salvador.

Several other planes carrying Latin American presidents, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and journalists were leaving Washington separately, trailing Zelaya to see what happens in the skies over Honduras before deciding where to land.

Thousands of protesters descended on the airport in the Honduran capital in anticipation of the showdown. Police helicopters hovered overhead. Commercial flights were canceled, and outside the airport about 200 soldiers with riot shields formed a line in front of the protesters.

"The government of President (Roberto) Micheletti has ordered the armed forces and the police not to allow the entrance of any plane bringing the former leader," the foreign minister of the interim government, Enrique Ortez, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who personally condemned Zelaya's ouster as a coup d'etat.

Speaking live from the plane through Telesur, Zelaya called on the Honduran military to leave the airport free for him to land.

"No one can obligate me to turn around. The constitution prohibits expelling Hondurans from the country. I am returning with all of my constitutional guarantees," Zelaya declared.

But with their safety in the air not guaranteed, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa pleaded with the Honduran military forces to avoid bloodshed. "If there is violence the whole world must clearly know who is responsible," he said.

If Zelaya's plane is allowed to land, the others will land as well, Correa said. If not, Correa, the presidents of Paraguay and Argentina and Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, planned to land in El Salvador.

Honduras' new government has vowed to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since taking office in 2006.

Despite a Supreme Court ruling, Zelaya had also pressed ahead with a referendum on whether to hold an assembly to consider changing the constitution, and critics feared he would press to extend his rule.

But by sending soldiers to shoot up the presidential residence and fly Zelaya into exile a week ago, the Micheletti government has brought itself universal condemnations from the United Nations and OAS.

No nation has recognized the new government; President Barack Obama has united with conservative Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and leftist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in criticism.

The OAS had given the Honduran government until Saturday to reinstate Zelaya, and sent two emergency missions to Honduras in hopes of heading off an escalation. But Micheletti pointedly rejected the group's demands.

The poor Central American country's Roman Catholic archbishop and its human right commissioner urged Zelaya to stay away, warning that his return could spark bloodshed. The interim government said it would arrest Zelaya and put him on trial despite near-universal international condemnation of the coup that removed him as he campaigned to revise the constitution.

The OAS suspended Honduras as a member late Saturday. Micheletti preemptively pulled out of the organization hours earlier rather than comply with an ultimatum that Zelaya be restored.

Zelaya has urged loyalists to support his arrival in Honduras in a peaceful show of force.

"We are going to show up at the Honduras International Airport in Tegucigalpa ... and on Sunday we will be in Tegucigalpa," Zelaya said Saturday in the taped statement carried on the Web sites of the Telesur and Cubadebate media outlets. "Practice what I have always preached, which is nonviolence."

Zelaya supporters said they got the message as they converged on the airport.

"We have no pistols or arms, just our principles," organizer Rafael Alegria said. "We have the legitimate right to fight for the defense of democracy and to restore President Zelaya."

Large crowds of Zelaya's critics have staged their own daily demonstrations to back Micheletti, the congressional president who was named by lawmakers to finish out the final six months of the Zelaya's term.

Most of the ousted leader's supporters come from the working and middle classes of this impoverished nation, while his opponents are based in the ranks of the well-to-do — although the increasingly leftist approach of the wealthy rancher had eroded his popular support.
___

Will Weissert reported from Tegucigalpa and Nestor Ikeda from Washington. Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas and Marcos Aleman in Tegucigalpa, and Jorge Barrera and Michael Bodenhurst in Washington contributed to this report.

Colombia refuses to rule out future military raids into Ecuador & Venezuela

Latin American leaders face border crisis
Second FARC leader Ivan Rios killed in Colombia by own security chief
AP, msnbc.com, March 7, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia - A summit of Latin American presidents aimed at defusing a growing border crisis turned into an angry showdown Friday, with finger-jabbing lectures, passionate speeches and a plea for goodwill that prompted stiff hand shakes between the leaders of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela later joined other leaders in approving a declaration to end the crisis triggered by Colombia's cross-border military attack on a leftist rebel camp in Ecuador.

The dramatic high point of the hours-long passion play came when Dominican President Leonel Fernandez tried to calm things down by urging Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to shake hands with his antagonists. Uribe then marched around the table and shared stiff handshakes with Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

But the appeal for harmony quickly dissolved, as Correa made yet another appeal to Uribe to respect their border, and never again act unilaterally to send commandos into his territory to bomb another rebel camp. If such an act is justified, then no border will be safe, Correa said, to perhaps the day's loudest applause.

The declaration adopted by the 20-nation Rio Group noted that Uribe had apologized for the raid last Saturday, which killed a Colombian rebel leader inside Ecuador's border, and that he pledged not to repeat the violation of national sovereignty.

The declaration, read by Fernandez, also reiterated the firm commitment by member governments to fight threats to national stability from "irregular or criminal groups."

Violent Friday
Adding another crushing blow to Latin America's oldest and strongest guerilla movement was the killing of the top rebel leader by his own chief of security on Friday. The security chief gave troops the leader's severed hand as proof, Colombia's defense minister said Friday.

Ivan Rios was the second member of the ruling secretariat of FARC to be killed in a week.

The guerrilla force was already shaken by the death Saturday of its spokesman, Raul Reyes, in a cross-border raid by Colombian troops into Ecuador.

"The FARC has suffered a new, major blow," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said at a news conference.

Santos said troops launched an operation designed to capture Rios on Feb. 17 after receiving tips that he was in a mountainous area of the western province of Caldas.

On Thursday, he said, a guerrilla known as Rojas came to the troops with Rios' severed hand, laptop computer and ID, saying he had killed his boss.

It was unclear what motivated Rojas to kill his boss, but Santos said it was to "relieve the military pressure."

Santos did not say what happened to Rojas, and he didn't take questions.

The U.S. State Department had a standing bounty of $5 million for Rios, whose real name is Jose Juvenal Velandia. He has been charged with drug smuggling by the United States, and is on a U.S. Treasury Department list of terrorists and drug traffickers.

Youngest member of leadership
In a 1999 interview with The Associated Press, Rios said he joined the insurgency as a student in Colombia's second city of Medellin to avoid being killed by right-wing death squads that had attacked other student activists.

Rios became known across Colombia as one of the rebels' main negotiators in failed peace talks that ended in 2002. He was thought to be around 40 years old.

Rios commanded the FARC's central bloc, which operates throughout Colombia's northwestern coffee region. Security forces say he frequently accompanied the FARC's senior leader, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, in recent years.

Rios "was the youngest member of the secretariat. He was very important to the rebels," said Alfredo Rangel of the Bogota-based think tank Security and Democracy. "This shows the army is capable of taking down the rebels' most important pillars and that any of the leaders can fall at any time."

Harsh words exchanged at summit
Meanwhile, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Uribe said Friday that Colombian rebels helped Correa get elected, citing as evidence a rebel's letter seized during the cross-border raid last week.

Correa walked out of the 20-nation Rio Group summit after the finger-wagging accusation, then returned and denounced the accusation as "infamy."

Uribe said his forces seized a letter during their raid Saturday on a rebel camp just across the border with Ecuador in which Raul Reyes — a rebel leader killed in the raid — told the guerrillas' top commander about "aid delivered to Rafael Correa, as instructed."

Uribe also said that he didn't give Correa advance warning of the attack on Ecuadorean soil because "we haven't had the cooperation of the government of President Correa in the fight against terrorism."

That prompted an angry exchange between the two, as other presidents sought to keep the dialogue civil.

Correa, who has broken off relations with Colombia and sent troops to the border over the incident, denounced Uribe as a liar, portrayed Ecuador as a victim of Colombia's conflict, and proposed an international peacekeeping force to guard their border.

"I reject this infamy that the government of Rafael Correa has collaborated with the FARC," Correa bellowed into the microphone as he accused Uribe of lying. His comments drew loud applause from other leaders, who met Uribe's speech with silence.

Crisis overshadows other summit issues
The summit was to have focused on energy and other issues, but those were overshadowed by the diplomatic crisis in the Andes after the deadly Colombian cross-border raid into Ecuador on Saturday that killed a senior Colombian rebel and 24 others.

It began quietly, with the host, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, appealing for unity. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said it was time to cool tensions and predicted the summit "is going to be positive."

"People should go cool off a bit, chill out their nerves," Chavez said before the summit started. "I think the meeting today is going to be positive, because it is going to help the debate. We have to debate, talk, and this is the first step toward finding the road."

But the accusations began quickly, with Correa criticizing "the aggression of Colombia" and Uribe saying that Correa is a dishonest partner in the fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"We didn't inform him (of the raid) because we have not had cooperation from the government of President Correa in the fight against terrorism," Uribe said.

Latin American foreign ministers on Thursday drafted a statement saying national sovereignty must be respected. The draft, to be submitted to the presidents on Friday, mirrors one earlier in the week from the Organization of American States, said Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley.

Military buildup on border
Chavez has ordered thousands of troops and tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia and threatened to slash trade and nationalize Colombian-owned businesses. Correa has also sent troops to the border, although Uribe has said he won't do the same.

The summit marks the first face-to-face encounters between Chavez, Correa and Uribe since the international crisis began.

Correa told reporters he wants Uribe to apologize for the attack in Ecuadorean territory and give his "formal and firm commitment" that Colombia will never "violate" the sovereignty of another country.

On his arrival in Santo Domingo late Thursday, Chavez claimed the strike was "planned and directed by the United States." Later, he said he had information that "gringo soldiers" participated in the attack, but provided no evidence.

U.S. Southern Command spokesman Jose Ruiz neither confirmed or denied this week that the U.S. military took part in the attack. The latest body was discovered Thursday, according to Ecuador's security minister, Gustavo Larrea.

Uribe is hugely popular among Colombians for cracking down on the FARC, which finances itself through kidnapping and drug trafficking.

Nicaragua, a leftist ally of Venezuela and Ecuador, broke relations with Colombia on Thursday.

France's contacts with rebels cut
The attack also cut off all contacts between the rebels and France, where the freedom of French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt has become a national cause, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Friday.

Uribe has refused to rule out future military incursions into Ecuador or Venezuela, saying he first needs assurances from Correa and Chavez that they are not harboring rebels.

One of the rare regional voices offering support for Colombia was Salvadoran President Tony Saca, who said the Colombian government should be able to defend its citizens.

"We need to understand Colombia has the legitimate right to go after terrorists ... wherever they may be, of course without harming the sovereignty of another country," Saca said.


This report includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press.