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BBC MUNDO RADIO
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (Reuters) — The ousted president of Honduras said Thursday that the government would permit him to leave the country only if he signed a letter dropping his demand to be reinstated.
The ousted leader, Manuel Zelaya, had planned to leave his refuge in the Brazilian Embassy on Wednesday night to fly to Mexico, but the trip was aborted after he refused to go into exile on the government’s terms, which included dropping his insistence on being reinstated. Mr. Zelaya said he wanted the right to campaign from abroad for his return to power.
“There was a letter that they wanted me to sign, and I refused to sign it,” Mr. Zelaya told Radio Globo. “It was to renounce the mandate which the people gave me to be president until Jan. 27.” That was the date when his term was to end before he was deposed in a coup on June 28.
The foreign minister of the de facto government, Carlos López, said that Mr. Zelaya should respect a decision by the Honduran Congress, which decided in a vote last week that he would not be permitted to return to office.
“There was an agreement,” Mr. López said on a local television station.
“He was going to respect the decision of the National Congress that confirmed the end of his mandate,” Mr. López added.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, said that it was unacceptable to impose conditions on Mr. Zelaya’s departure, and he blamed the United States for being too tolerant of the de facto government.
Hondurans chose a new president, Porfirio Lobo, in an election on Nov. 29, but many countries, including Brazil, have not recognized the vote.
Mr. Lobo is scheduled to take power in late January, and he has said that he wants a political amnesty for all those involved in the coup.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has praised Mr. Lobo for working to achieve national reconciliation and calling for the formation of a national unity government and a truth commission.
Soldiers took Mr. Zelaya, still in his pajamas, from his home in June and put him on a plane out of the country, initiating Central America’s worst political crisis since the cold war.
