Honduran interim leader Roberto Micheletti imposed a nationwide 48-hour curfew after the army ousted elected President Manuel Zelaya and sent him into exile.
Congress voted Micheletti in as the country’s new leader just hours after Zelaya fled, while insisting he was still president.
Shots were heard in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa late on Sunday and the UN General Assembly was to discuss the crisis in yesterday when Micheletti was to announce his new government.
After some 200 troops swooped on Zelaya’s home at dawn on Sunday, he was bundled away in his pyjamas and flown out of the country. Zelaya traveled to Costa Rica and later Managua to take part in a summit of Latin American leaders. He told reporters he was determined to return and “reclaim his post.”
At the summit, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the international community should teach the Honduran government “a lesson” and threw his weight behind Zelaya.
But the meeting ended without any specific recommendations. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said leaders were determined to avoid “bloodshed.”
Micheletti brushed off international condemnation of the takeover.
He “had came to the presidency not by a coup d’etat but by a completely legal process as set out in our laws,” he said.
The curfew would end today, he said.
Micheletti warned Chavez his country was ready to “go to war” if there was interference by “this gentleman.”
The interim leader said he had information that several batallions of troops were being prepared outside of Honduras for intervention.
“I would not want anybody to have the courage to do that because our armed forces are ready to defend the country,” he said.
In Tegucigalpa , shots were heard near the presidential palace late on Sunday.
And a politically powerful union of teachers announced an indefinite strike to protest Zelaya’s ouster.
As planes and helicopters overflew the capital, several hundred Zelaya supporters ignored warnings to stay home and took to the streets of Tegucigalpa shouting, “We want Mel,” the president’s nickname.
The demonstration was halted in front of the presidential palace by troops and armored vehicles.
Zelaya’s overthrow was triggered by a standoff between the president and the military and legal institutions over his bid to secure a second term.
Congress said it voted unanimously to remove the president for “apparent misconduct” and “repeated violations of the Constitution and the law and disregard of orders and judgments of the institutions.”
Micheletti was appointed to serve out the rest of the term, which ends in January. New general elections are planned for Nov. 29.
Zelaya, who was elected to a non-renewable four-year term in 2005, had planned a vote on Sunday asking Hondurans to sanction a referendum to allow him to stand again in the November polls.
The referendum had been ruled illegal by Honduras’s top court and was opposed by the military.
The Supreme Court said on Sunday that it had ordered Zelaya’s ouster to protect law and order.
Also See: Latin America condemns coup
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