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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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Zelaya: Snipers Pointing Guns at Brazilian
Embassy
TEGUCIGALPA – Deposed Honduran President Mel
Zelaya said Friday that snipers were
pointing their guns at the Brazilian Embassy
in Tegucigalpa, where the ousted head of
state has been holed up since slipping back
into his country Sept. 21.
“Early this morning military snipers climbed
to a platform from which they have been
pointing their rifles and laser sights at
the embassy of Brazil,” Zelaya told Efe by
telephone.
He added that police and soldiers under the
command of the de facto regime in power
since the June 28 coup had been marching up
and down in front of the mission throughout
the day in what he described as an attempt
to intimidate those inside.
Several photographs of a soldier on an
extendable metal platform were e-mailed to
media outlets Friday from inside the
Brazilian Embassy.
Zelaya said that if the Roberto Micheletti
regime “is capable of doing that to a
president who was elected by the people and
then toppled, what won’t it do to the
Honduran people, to ordinary citizens who
walk down the street.”
The deposed leader also denied claims by
Micheletti’s foreign minister, Carlos Lopez,
that armed foreigners were in the Brazilian
mission.
“Here there is neither a single Venezuelan,
nor any Iranian,” Zelaya said. “The only
South Americans are a few journalists, and
an (East) Indian who became a naturalized
Honduran and supports the popular
resistance” to the coup.
He said that many of the people inside the
embassy “are getting sick and growing
desperate over the savage repression
Micheletti applying.
“No one is carrying weapons here. What has
been said, that there are armed people here,
isn’t true, it’s a lie. There could be a
plan to fake an internal confrontation that
doesn’t exist here,” Zelaya said.
Talks continued Friday at a hotel in
Tegucigalpa between representatives of
Zelaya and the de facto regime, but with
little sign of progress.
The two sides were brought together by a
delegation from the Organization of American
States that urged the parties to forge a
consensus based on the San Jose Accord.
Proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar
Arias, the accord calls for Zelaya’s return
to office; a “guarantee” that he won’t press
for an assembly to rewrite the Honduran
constitution; formation of a national unity
government; a political amnesty for Zelaya
and the coup leaders, and mechanisms for
international supervision to ensure the pact
is honored.
Zelaya accepted those terms weeks ago, but
Micheletti has been adamant in rejecting the
reinstatement of the elected president,
whose term ends in January.
Micheletti contends Zelaya’s ouster was not
a coup, insisting that the soldiers who
dragged him from the presidential palace
were simply enforcing a Supreme Court ban on
the president’s planned non-binding
plebiscite on the idea of revising the
constitution.
While the coup leaders accuse Zelaya of
seeking to extend his stay in office, any
potential constitutional change to allow
presidential re-election would not have
taken place until well after the incumbent
stepped down.
Time is running out before presidential
elections scheduled for Nov. 29, as both the
European Union and Washington have said they
will not recognize the winner of that
balloting unless Zelaya is restored to
office beforehand. EFE
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