Zelaya's Plane Not Allowed to Land in Honduras

By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 6, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 5 -- In a high-stakes standoff that played out in the skies over Honduras, the airplane carrying ousted president Manuel Zelaya was forced to circle the nation's main airport twice before flying away Sunday evening after coup leaders who deposed Zelaya blocked his landing with troops on the runway.

The turn-back of Zelaya's white jet left thousands of his supporters shouting in disappointment and anger. Minutes earlier, security forces fired tear gas and bullets at the crowd to keep demonstrators away from the airport, which was surrounded by soldiers and military vehicles.

The Red Cross said people 30 people were wounded in the melee, but there were conflicting reports about fatalities. An Associated Press photographer reported that one man was shot in the head.

Immediately after Zelaya's plane flew away, Honduran air force helicopters and aircraft appeared over Tegucigalpa, the capital. Zelaya, who had repeatedly vowed to return to his country, later landed in Managua, Nicaragua.

The aerial standoff, which took place at sunset, punctuated a crisis that has gripped this country of 7 million for the past week. The entire hemisphere, including the United States, has been drawn into a bitter political brawl in Honduras between the leftist Zelaya and his conservative opponents that shows no sign of ending soon.

Zelaya was deposed June 28 in a military-backed coup that has been condemned throughout the Americas but has frustrated diplomats in the Obama administration, who have not been able to persuade the Honduran coup leaders to back down. The leaders of the new Honduran government say Zelaya is guilty of treason for advocating a change to the constitution that would allow a president to serve more than one term. The coup backers also fear Zelaya's close ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The government of Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president, had warned Sunday that it would refuse to allow Zelaya to land at any airport in Honduras and ordered the military to turn the plane back. A Honduran aviation official said the restrictions applied only to Zelaya and his entourage. But the order effectively shut down air traffic across the country for the day. Flights from all major carriers in and out of the nation were canceled.

Zelaya took off for Honduras from Washington's Dulles International Airport about 3 p.m., followed by a plane carrying the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay, as well as the secretary general of the Organization of American States, according to senior Obama administration officials.

Zelaya and the other presidents flew in different planes for safety reasons -- and because the other leaders were expecting Zelaya to mount his face-off over Tegucigalpa.

Zelaya was accompanied only by top advisers, a Nicaraguan priest and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann. Also aboard his plane was Venezuelan state television network Telesur, which broadcast live interviews with Zelaya from 35,000 feet.

"Today I feel like I have sufficient spiritual strength, blessed with the blood of Christ, to be able to arrive there and raise the crucifix," he said in one live transmission.

He insisted that he remained commander in chief of the Honduran military and pleaded with troops to allow him to land.

As his plane circled the airport, Zelaya narrated his approach live on Telesur. "I am here with the two pilots. They are doing what is humanly possible to approach the landing strip. They do not want to land with obstacles in the way," he said. "What is happening here is a barbarity."

Thousands of his supporters surrounded the international airport in the Honduran capital. Hundreds of police officers and soldiers in riot gear kept the crowds away from the terminal.

As word spread that Zelaya's plane was coming, the crowds pressed against the police barricades. Soldiers or police fired tear gas, and shots were heard.

Asked why his government did not allow Zelaya to land and then arrest him, as officials have repeatedly threatened, Micheletti said that kind of publicity could incite violence.

"When Zelaya is prepared to turn himself in quietly, he can do so," he said.

Micheletti said in a news conference that Nicaraguan troops were massing at the border with Honduras.

"I want to ask the country of Nicaragua, our brothers, not to cross our borders, because we are ready to defend our country. If there are acts of war against our country, there will be bloodshed," he said.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega dismissed the charges of troop movement as "totally false." Critics of the de facto Micheletti government said the rumors of a war with Nicaragua were propaganda intended to consolidate power for the new regime by introducing an illusory external threat.

Pressed on the Nicaraguan confrontation, Micheletti conceded that "it is a small number of troops, without the support of their commanders, and they haven't crossed the border, and they are not in a position to strike against Honduras."

U.S. officials said they were not aware of any Nicaraguan troop movements toward its border.

Senior Obama administration officials, briefing reporters earlier Sunday, said that if Zelaya's plane were not allowed to land in Honduras, he probably would return to Washington for consultations with the OAS, possibly as early as Monday.

Zelaya, however, said he would try to return home Monday or Tuesday.

U.S. officials confirmed that Honduras's de facto government had sent a message to the OAS seeking to open negotiations, a move that one official described as positive.

"We think this could create the basis for continuing movement by the OAS on diplomatic initiatives," one official said. However, he said the hemispheric body would still insist that Zelaya be allowed to return and serve out the rest of his term, which ends in January.

Zelaya left Washington after the OAS voted in a late meeting Saturday to suspend Honduras, putting in jeopardy about $200 million in loans the Central American country receives from the Inter-American Development Bank. In addition, U.S. military and development aid has been "put on pause," the official said, and military cooperation has been limited.

Representatives of many countries at the OAS meeting -- including the United States -- urged Zelaya not to fly back to Honduras, saying the move was dangerous for him and his supporters.

"Given the situation in Honduras, we did not see how this was going to assist in creating a political space for dialogue. But at the same time, we respect the right of President Zelaya as a Honduran citizen, and the legal and constitutional leader of Honduras, to make his own decisions," the U.S. official said.

Sheridan reported from Washington.