Ousted Honduran leader to spend Christmas in Brazilian embassy

The latest word from Honduras is that ousted leftist president Manuel Zelaya and his family will spend Christmas in Brazil's embassy in Tagucigalpa, where he has been sheltered since sneaking into the country in September, three months after being forced out in a military coup. "For Christmas, the army has told me they will let my mother and my children in and we will be here saying a prayer for the Honduran people," Zelaya told the Reuters international news service by phone from the embassy complex. "No family would want to go through what we are going through unless they were perverse, cruel or heartless." Zelaya was awakened by soldiers June 28 and flown out of the country in his pajamas when the Honduran military seized control and installed a legislative leader as interim president. The coup, apparently designed to prevent Zelaya from moving Honduras closer to Venezuela's anti-U.S. leader Hugo Chavez over the objections of business leaders, was condemned by most countries including the United States, which demanded Zelaya's reinstatement. Zelaya's opponents also accused him of planning to change Honduras' constitution to allow him to stay in office beyond the end of his term in November, Reuters said. Negotiations failed to produce a settlement and Honduras' Congress voted against Zelaya's return to office. The interim government sponsored a new presidential election last month, won by opposition leader Porfirio Lobo. Many European and Latin American countries have refused to recognize the result but the United States said it offered a way to end Honduras' leadership crisis, Reuters said. Lobo is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 27 and has promised amnesty for Zelaya and coup leaders, Reuters said.

OAS suspends Honduras

Maybe the decision by the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras after its military overthrew elected leftist president Manuel Zelaya will bring enough pressure to force the junta to step aside, but it's hard to see at this point how that will be accomplished. The OAS voted 33-0 on Saturday to bar Honduras from participation in the organization, shortly after its secretary-general, Jose Miguel Insulza, returned from Washington, D.C., following an unsuccessful effort to broker a deal to return Zelaya to office, according to the Miami Herald newspaper. The resolution passed by the OAS called the military coup an "unconstitutional altertation of the democratic order" and bars Honduras from receiving loans or other aid while still requiring the nation to adhere to the diplomatic union's human rights rules. A spokeswoman for the new military government in Tagucigalpa, the Honduran capital, dismissed Insulza's effort as insincere and said her country had withdrawn from the OAS before the meeting. "We saw that our good faith was taken advantage of and we were not listened to," Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena de Casco said, according to the Herald. "Honduras has been viewed as a small, poor country. It's said and unfortunate, but the freedom of Honduras is not for sale." Military leaders apparently were alarmed by Zelaya's advocacy of a referendum polling Honduran voters to see if they would accept extending his term of office as a power grab, on a par with efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to convince voters to lift constitutional limits on his time in office. Zelaya had frequently clashed with Honduras' attorney general, Supreme Court and military leaders, the Herald said. But Zelaya immediately won the support of most countries, including the United States. The deposed leader vowed to return to Honduras on Sunday, even though the ruling junta cautioned that he would be arrested if he did.