OAS chief still has hope Honduran settlement.

Given that the Honduran Supreme Court has declared that Zelaya will face arrest and criminal charges if he returns and Micheletti has said that Zelaya cannot return under any conditions it is difficult to understand why Insulza, the OAS chief, still has some optimism. The key may be that the military, some in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and Chambers of Commerce favor a solution along the lines of the Arias accords. They all met together the other day but nevertheless so far their comrades coup supporters are unmoved! If Obama got serious and starting freezing assets of coup leaders in the US and cut off all US aid--much is still flowing partly through a fund that Hillary Clinton chairs, then things might change rather quickly.
Zelaya has of late said nothing about returning. Has he been told to shut up by the U.S. and wait patiently for his return as a lame duck president for a few months!

OAS chief still has hope for Honduran settlement
OAS chief still has hope for compromise to settle Honduran governmental crisis
FOSTER KLUGAP News
Aug 26, 2009 14:23 EST
The head of the Organization of American States held out hope Wednesday for a resolution of the Honduran presidential crisis even after the high-level delegation he led to the Central American country failed to arrange for ousted President Manuel Zelaya's return.



OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza urged a quick acceptance of compromise accords before campaigning heats up for the Nov. 29 presidential election to pick Zelaya's successor.
"There's still a climate for making one final effort," Insulza told an OAS meeting, speaking through an interpreter. Insulza was briefing the organization after returning from a visit to Tegucigalpa, Honduras' capital, with a group of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers.
Zelaya was deposed and exiled on June 28 amid suspicions among his opponents that he wanted to overturn the constitutional provision limiting Honduran presidents to a single term. He denies that was his goal.
Insulza noted some progress arising from the OAS delegation's meetings with senior lawmakers, ministers, presidential candidates and members of the judiciary, electoral commission, military and civil society. At the same time, he acknowledged a continuing reluctance among many of those he met with to accept the San Jose Accord, a compromise proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has acted as a mediator in the dispute.
With each passing day, Insulza said, the margin for solving the crisis gets slimmer. Attention to the coup will not disappear, he said, but it will be diverted by the election campaign season that begins Sept. 1.
Many in Honduras, Insulza said, raised concerns about Zelaya's reinstatement and an amnesty for his alleged offenses, both part of the San Jose Accord.
The officials the delegation met with, Insulza said, appeared more interested in discussing the events that led to Zelaya's ouster. "We wanted to get back to the agreement of San Jose, which was our goal in being there," he said.
On Tuesday, Honduras' interim leader, Roberto Micheletti, acknowledged the country would suffer consequences for refusing to reinstate Zelaya, but he suggested that nothing short of armed intervention could change the situation.
Lew Amselem, the U.S. representative to the OAS, said the U.S. decision to stop, starting Wednesday, issuing most visas at its embassy in Honduras sends a clear signal that "it is never acceptable in the 21st century to expel a sitting president from a country."
Opposition to Zelaya's return is fairly widespread, he said, but "nothing changes the fact that a president was forcibly deposed and exiled. That's the issue."
Zelaya's return to finish his presidential term is indispensable to resolving the matter, Amselem said.
The interim government says Zelaya's removal was legal because it was ordered by the Honduran Supreme Court after he went ahead with plans to hold a referendum asking Honduran voters if they wanted to form a special assembly to rewrite the constitution. The court had ruled that vote illegal.
___

Robert Naiman: The Honduran Coup and the Minimum Wage in Honduras

While a few commentators remark on the reforms that may have upset the elite in Honduras and been a contributing cause tot he coup Naiman picks out the minimum wage in particular. Note that teachers, hospital workers, and taxi drivers are now on strike. All of this turmoil is more or less glossed over in U.S. media reports. All that is mentioned is the coming OAS delegation that is supposed to convince the coup government to accept the San Jose Accords. So far the Micheletti government refuses to countenance any return of Zelaya on any conditions. No doubt Dole and Chiquita are happy that the coup is continuing all though they would probably like to see conditions return to normal as well.

The Huffington PostAugust 8, 2009
Robert NaimanNational Coordinator of Just Foreign Policy.
Posted: August 7, 2009 05:52 PM
The Minimum Wage and the Coup in Honduras

The coup in Honduras -- and the at best grudging and vacillating support in Washington for the restoration of President Zelaya -- has thrown into stark relief a fundamental fault line in Latin America and a moral black hole in U.S. policy toward the region.

What is the minimum wage which a worker shall be paid for a day's labor?

Supporters of the coup have tried to trick Americans into believing that President Zelaya was ousted by the Honduran military because he broke the law. But this is nonsense. A Honduran bishop told Catholic News Service,

"Some say Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy by proposing a constitutional assembly. But the poor of Honduras know that Zelaya raised the minimum salary. That's what they understand. They know he defended the poor by sharing money with mayors and small towns. That's why they are out in the streets closing highways and protesting (to demand Zelaya's return)"
This is why the greedy, self-absorbed Honduran elite turned against President Zelaya: because he was pursuing policies in the interests of the majority. The Washington Post noted in mid-July,

To many poor Hondurans, deposed president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was a trailblazing ally who scrapped school tuitions, raised the minimum wage and took on big business.
In a statement condemning support for the coup by U.S. business groups, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation expressed its concern that under the coup regime, there are

worsening working conditions, and in particular at efforts to claw back a wage increase ordered by President Zelaya six months ago in order to reflect the increased cost of food and other essentials. In reality the increased wage barely covered 90% of basic food needs and less than a third of a living wage covering basic needs such as food, rent, transport, education, and medical care.
It's not just in Honduras that raising the minimum wage provoked a coup. In reporting about efforts by Haitian lawmakers this week to raise the minimum wage in Haiti, AP noted:

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in 2004, in part after business owners angered by his approval of an increased minimum wage organized opposition against him.
This May, the Haitian Parliament approved a proposal to triple the minimum wage to about $5 a day. But President Preval rejected this, saying

the increase should omit workers at factories producing garments for export. Preval said those workers should receive an increase to about $3.
What's the argument in Haiti against raising the minimum wage?
The debate has fueled unrest across the impoverished Caribbean nation, with some critics arguing that an increase would hurt plans to fight widespread unemployment by creating jobs in factories that produce clothing for export to the United States.
There are the magic words I search for in these articles, often buried at the bottom: "United States."

So, the argument is being made that Haiti can't afford to raise the minimum wage for workers in the export sector to $5 a day, because if they did Americans would buy clothes and shoes produced in some other countries.

Let me underline this, dear reader. You, as an American consumer, you are being invoked in Haiti as the reason that the minimum wage cannot be raised to $5 a day.

Of course this is nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Americans, along with the overwhelming majority of Haitians and Hondurans, would be absolutely delighted if Haitian and Honduran workers producing clothes for the U.S. market would be paid more. Labor costs are a small fraction of the prices that consumers face. Wages are so low because that yields even more profits for those who already have more money than they can ever spend; the low wage floor is being determined by government policy in Washington, Haiti, Honduras, and elsewhere, not by the desires of consumers. No magic formula of economics determines the minimum wage that can be sustained in Haiti and Honduras. At the margin - whether the minimum wage shall be $3 a day or $5 a day in the export sector in Haiti -- it is determined politically.
.....................
And by its failure to help effectively Latin American efforts to restore President Zelaya, the Obama Administration is helping to drive down the minimum wage in Honduras, Haiti, and throughout the world. And the reason that the Obama Administration is, de facto, taking the side of the corrupt and greedy ruling elite in Honduras, is that, as usual, U.S. foreign policy is being determined by Corporate America, not Main Street America, because the power and efforts of Main Street America to affect U.S. foreign policy in Honduras -- the U.S. labor movement and its friends, basically - is too weak, compared to the infrastructure and efforts of Corporate America's actions to shape U.S. policy.

.........
So, the next time some lying moron invokes "economics" to "explain" to you that the wages of impoverished third world workers who produce for the U.S. market cannot be raised, remember the coup in Honduras, and how Washington sat on its hands while a democratically elected government was punished by greedy elites with a military coup for trying to raise the minimum wage.

Der Spiegel interview with Zelaya

Zelaya clearly commits himself to the Arias plan even though this would limit his powers and make him in effect a lameduck caretaker president. The idea that he would be able to bring the coup leaders to trial seems to me to be wishful thinking. In any event he should know that amnesty for the coup leaders is part and parcel of the Arias plan as far as I understand it.
Zelaya is careful not to put much blame on Obama for what is happening although he does make it clear that he expects the U.S. to put more pressure on the coup leaders to accept the Arias plan.
The OAS is sending a delegation to talk with the coup government so perhaps in the end the coup leaders will accept the Arias plan even though it involves Zelaya returning as nominal president at least.


SPIEGEL ONLINE

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH MANUEL ZELAYA
'We Will Not be Brought to Our Knees'
In a SPIEGEL interview, ousted President Manuel Zelaya, 56, discusses the coup in his native Honduras, the lack of intervention from Washington, his political ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his hopes to unseat the regime by peaceful means.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, you have now established your headquarters in northern Nicaragua, only a few kilometers from the Honduran border. Will you attempt, as you have already done several times in recent weeks, to return to Honduras on your own?

Zelaya: I could go back across the border today or tomorrow, but I'm being threatened. The coup leaders want to murder me, or at least arrest me, as they have done once before. I want to prepare for my return in a peaceful way. Hondurans should know: I am prepared to resume control of the country at the appropriate moment. For now, we are organizing the resistance.



SPIEGEL: Your Costa Rican counterpart, President Oscar Arias, has unveiled a peace plan designed to reinstate you. Do you have faith in a negotiated solution?

Zelaya: We accept the Arias plan. Negotiations are the only way. But it will only work if the international community increases its pressure on the coup leaders. It has to make sure that coups don't become an epidemic. That would jeopardize security and stability on the entire continent. If coups, revolutions and uprisings were to spread throughout Latin America once again, the United States and Europe would also pay a high price.

SPIEGEL: Under the peace plan, you would be required to give up some of your power. For instance, you would no longer be able to appoint your own ministers ...

Zelaya: I accept that. I'm a politician, and I'm tolerant.

SPIEGEL: Do you see an opportunity for dialogue with the new regime?

Zelaya: International pressure would have to be increased for that to happen. It affected the coup leaders when Washington suspended their diplomatic visas, and the sanctions are also taking effect. In many ports, goods coming from Honduras are no longer being unloaded. The German firm Adidas, along with Nike and clothing manufacturer Gap, have announced that they will cancel orders from Honduran factories unless democracy is restored.

SPIEGEL: Your supporters claim that the US ambassador and influential right-wing politicians in the United States were told about the coup in advance.

Zelaya: There were many rumors leading up to the coup, as well as unusual military movements. I'm sure that the Obama administration knew about it, but it didn't agree to the overthrow.

SPIEGEL: The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have criticized you for your attempts to return to Honduras on your own, by crossing the Nicaraguan border. Aren't you just provoking further violence with such actions?

Zelaya: They don't know anything about the suffering of the Honduran people, and the sacrifices Hondurans are making to bring me back. The military coup has turned into a dictatorship. It is oppressing the people and committing massive human rights violations. Hillary and the OAS should find out more about that.

SPIEGEL: The US government has condemned the coup. Was that too lackadaisical for you?

Zelaya: US President (Barack) Obama is sincere, but he is not acting decisively enough. He ought to pursue the coup leaders more resolutely so that such coups don't happen again.

SPIEGEL: The Honduran congress and the country's highest court accuse you of having breached the constitution. You wanted the people to vote directly on whether a decision to convene a constitutional convention should be voted on in the November elections.

Zelaya: But that isn't a reason to stage a coup right away. I didn't commit a breach of the constitution.


SPIEGEL: Will you insist on a constitutional reform if you return to Honduras?

Zelaya: I want to actively involve the people in democracy. This is a historic process, and it cannot be stopped.

SPIEGEL: One of the reasons you want to amend the constitution is so that you can be reelected, or so the accusations go.

Zelaya: I have never tried to do that, nor will I, because the constitution prohibits it.

SPIEGEL: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is one your key supporters. That's why you are suspected of trying to create a populist regime similar to his. How much influence does Chavez have on your government?

Zelaya: Absolutely zero. These accusations are just a trick to divert attention away from the coup leaders' true motives. Chavez is the scapegoat. In fact, the USA is the one intervening in Honduras. Seventy percent of Honduran exports go there. We have a military, trade and immigration treaty with Washington.

SPIEGEL: But Venezuela supplies discounted oil to Honduras, which makes you dependent on Chavez.

Zelaya: That's another of those lies. Venezuela covers only 15 percent of our oil needs. American oil companies bring in 85 percent.

SPIEGEL: You are also considered an admirer of Fidel Castro. How is your relationship with Cuba?

Zelaya: We have very good relations, just as we do with Europe and the United States. I have no problems with any country in the world, only with the economic elite in Honduras, which is getting rich at the expense of the poor. I don't want to drive them out. I just want them to change their attitude. The wealth must be more evenly distributed. The political parties that have ruled Honduras for the past 100 years are merely defending the economic elite.


SPIEGEL: But now you and coup leader Roberto Micheletti belong to the same party. You are both considered part of the upper class, and you yourself come from a family of wealthy cattle farmers. When did you discover your heart for the poor?

Zelaya: It was a long process of developing awareness. The neoliberal economic model has failed, and we need social policies for the disadvantaged in our society. That's why I aim for a new model of development, and part of my administration supported me in that endeavor. But the neoliberals simply want to expand their wealth, and they have no interest in the country's development. A few large companies dominate the Honduran economy. This plays into the hands of multinational corporations, which control the market, thereby creating even more poverty. I believe in entrepreneurship and economic liberalism. But things have to become more equitable, which is why we must amend the laws.

SPIEGEL: What happens if your efforts to return are unsuccessful? Will you call upon the Hondurans to rebel?

Zelaya: Under the constitution, the people have the right to resistance and rebellion if someone assumes power by force.

SPIEGEL: But that creates the threat of civil war.

Zelaya: There is the same danger if the coup leaders prevail. If that happens, we could face a long conflict, because we will not be brought to our knees. We are not afraid of their guns. The military in Honduras has only 7,000 men. If we were to take up arms, we would quickly drive away those few soldiers. But we want to unseat the regime in a peaceful and honorable way. Women, children, young people, students, workers -- we have all joined forces in a civil front against the coup. Even my 80-year-old mother is taking to the streets and offering peaceful resistance.

SPIEGEL: The coup regime claims that there is in fact little resistance, and that there have been hardly any dead or injured.

Zelaya: More than 1,000 people were arrested and are now in prison, and four young people were killed in a protest march. I am afraid that even more people have died. We don't know exactly what is happening in the country. The coup leaders control most of the media.

SPIEGEL: Are the armed forces behind the coup government?

Zelaya: The military is divided. Many young officers oppose the coup. They could rise up against the military leadership any day.

SPIEGEL: Will you put the coup leaders on trial when you return to Honduras?

Zelaya: Of course. There should be an international trial, to discourage copycats.

SPIEGEL: What happens with the elections planned for November? Would you agree to early elections?

Zelaya: They can take place tomorrow, as far as I'm concerned, but I will not participate. I am working on a big plan for social reforms. We are merely changing the strategy, but the struggle continues.

Interview conducted by Jens Glüsing. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.



© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH

Zelaya attempts again to return to Honduras.

It is rather strange that Zelaya would actually announce where he will cross the border. It seems very unlikely that the military will stand down as Zelaya suggests. More likely he will be arrested if he gets in at all and there may be violent confrontations with supporters.
The article speaks of the OAS taking over negotiations, however the Honduran coup govt. has left the organisation. What is there to negotiate anyway since the coup govt. refuses to countenance the return of Zelaya and that is the key demand of the OAS! It makes no sense except as a stalling mechanism supported by the U.S. to avoid having to do something about the coup. Obama is loathe to actually move strongly against the coup leaders because he will be seen to side with Chavez, Cuba, etc. This is from the BBC.

Honduras leader starts return bid
Ousted President Manuel Zelaya is on his way to the Honduran border in a second attempt to return home after nearly a month in exile, reports say.

He left the Honduran embassy in the Nicaraguan capital Managua for the border city of Esteli, from where he will try a land crossing on Saturday.

He is being accompanied by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.

The interim government has vowed to arrest him if he sets foot in Honduras, as mediation talks failed.

Mr Zelaya made an attempt to return home on 5 July, but his plane was prevented from landing when the Honduran military blocked the runway.

This time, he said he hoped soldiers at the land border would stand down when they saw him and called on his supporters to meet him.

"I think the guns will be lowered when they see their people and their president," Mr Zelaya was quoted as saying by AP news agency shortly before leaving.

He said earlier that his wife and children would accompany him and that he would "go back unarmed, pacifically, so that Honduras can return to peace and tranquillity".

Mr Zelaya was exiled on 28 June after a crisis erupted over his attempts to hold a vote on changing the constitution.

'Clock ticking'

The ousted leader was attempting a second return after delegations from the two sides failed to reach agreement at talks in Costa Rica mediated by President Oscar Arias.

Mr Arias produced a detailed plan to facilitate Mr Zelaya's return, which include proposals for:

•Mr Zelaya to return to the presidency on Friday and serve out his term which ends in January 2010
•a government of national reconciliation to be formed by 27 July
•an amnesty to be granted covering political crimes committed during this crisis
•a truth commission to be set up to investigate events in the run-up to Mr Zelaya's removal
•presidential elections to be held a month early, on 28 October.
President Arias, a Nobel peace laureate, said this was his third and final attempt to mediate a peaceful solution.


"The clock is ticking fast, and it's ticking against the Honduran people," he said.

"I warn you that this plan is not perfect. Nothing in democracy is perfect."

Delegates of the interim government reiterated they would not reinstate Mr Zelaya as president but said they would present the Arias plan to Congress.

But since it was Congress that approved the ousting of Mr Zelaya, the move may prove to be of limited importance, says the BBC Central America correspondent, Stephen Gibbs.

If no agreement were reached, Mr Arias suggested that the Organisation of American States (OAS) take over the negotiations.

That might put further pressure on the interim government, says our correspondent.

The OAS, along with other international groupings, has been quite clear that Mr Zelaya is the legitimate president, and should be reinstated immediately.

'No return'

The crisis was triggered when Mr Zelaya sought to hold a non-binding public consultation to ask people whether they supported efforts to change the constitution.

Critics interpreted that as an attempt to remove the current one-term limit on serving as president.

The Supreme Court declared his attempt to hold a vote illegal under the Honduran constitution and the military was sent to arrest him. He was flown into exile on 28 June.

Carlos Lopez, foreign minister in the military-backed interim government, told reporters in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on Wednesday that there was no chance of Mr Zelaya returning as president.

"This hypothesis of a possible return of Mr Zelaya to occupy the presidency is completely ruled out."

Speaking in Managua, Mr Zelaya said: "The coup leaders are totally refusing my reinstatement."

"By refusing to sign, [the talks] have failed."


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http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8165496.stm

Published: 2009/07/24 00:56:53 GMT

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Honduran Negotiations finish today (Wednesday)

If the two sides do not agree to the new solution Arias will turn over negotiations to the OAS. It is rather surprising that the U.S. was not able or not willing to put sufficient pressure on the coup administration to force them to sign. Maybe they will at the last moment. Zelaya claims he will return to Honduras agreement or no agreement. If that happens there could be a lot of bloodshed. I doubt that Zelaya will get much support from Clinton.

This is from Bloomberg.

Zelaya, in his interview with Telesur from the Honduran embassy in Managua, said the next step if the mediation efforts fail will be to ask the UN and OAS to help enforce the resolutions they passed unanimously to return him to power and restore constitutional order in Honduras.

He said he plans to meet again with U.S. State Department officials Thomas Shannon and Ian Kelly and Clinton in a bid to bolster support for his return.

This is from an American blogger in Caracas. After the dramatic standoff at the Tegucigalpa airport mainstream media has lost interest as usual. It is rather ironic that the military should stop Zelaya from landing when they insist that they want to arrest him. How will they arrest him if they refuse to let him in the country. Perhaps they hire some private contractor to do it for them!

This is from Chavezcode.

President Zelaya has arrived safely to San Salvador, reuniting with the heads of state from Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay, and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza. They are expected to meet tonight and discuss alternatives to President Zelaya's return to Honduras, after his first attempt was thwarted by the coup forces that impeded his landing in the Tegucigalpa airport by placing army vehicles and personnel on the runway. A confirmed meeting is taking place tomorrow in Washington, D.C., between President Zelaya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Zelaya is expected to fly early tomorrow to the US capital. Clinton will most likely seek to negotiate some kind of agreement between the coup forces and President Zelaya in order to ensure his safe return and reinstate constitutional order.Nevertheless, there are many concerns that Washington is looking to support its allies in Honduras, primarily those in the business and military sector who have been heavily involved in this coup, while trying to "save face" and project a "positive" non-interventionist image of Obama in Latin America. However, many question the late response by the Obama administration to the military coup, now a week in the making, and the outright lack of condemnation by Obama and Clinton regarding human rights violations committed by the coup government and repression of press freedoms. No comment has been made by Washington regarding the forced national curfew imposed by the coup government, which is now from 6pm through 6am, the suspension of constitutional rights, the censoring of media outlets not favorable to the coup, the detaining and persecution of journalists and members of Zelaya's cabinet and family, and the dead and wounded at the hands of the coup military forces. There are also questions regarding Washington's ambiguity to the coup, refusing to initially classify the events as a coup d'etat under US law, which would require immediate suspension of economic and military aid to Honduras.No deal should be cut with the coup forces in Honduras, and by no means should Zelaya or the people of Honduras permit "early elections", which is one of the "ways out" that Clinton may push for tomorrow.

Zelaya attempt to return to Honduras

Zelaya is already in flight to Tegucigalpa. It remains to be seen if he will be able to land. It would seem not. What they need is some US military escorts! If there is violence and some of the personages with Zelaya are wounded or killed there could be disastrous consequence for everyone. Police are keeping protesters outside the airport which is closed to commerical traffic. The road to the airport is also closed. Another plane with more important personages it trailing behind the Zelaya plane. It will decide where to land when it sees what happens to the Zelaya plane.

This is from Yahoo.

"The government of President (Roberto) Micheletti has ordered the armed forces and the police not to allow the entrance of any plane bringing the former leader," the foreign minister of the interim government, Enrique Ortez, told The Associated Press on Sunday.


Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who personally condemned Zelaya's ouster as a coup d'etat.

Zelaya to return to Honduras on Sunday July 5th

I still wonder if this event will actually happen as Zelaya describes it. The president of Argentina did not confirm that she was going to be going back with Zelaya. Three hundred journalists seem to be quite a few. I wonder how many are from US English language media outlets! There does not seem to be much coverage of Honduran events in the US and Obama seems to be quite quiet since originally condemning the coup. The US ambassador is still in Honduras as far as I know.
The Honduran military apparently is already deploying at the airport. They were ready to arrest Zelaya if he had come with the head of the OAS. No doubt they will be ready also this time. This could be a momentous confrontation but so far the media have been asleep for the most part. They won't wake up unless the event actually happens. Of course they won't be there in force. It is Spanish language outlets that are covering events especially Cuban and Venezuelan news.

This is from the Washington Post:



Exiled Honduran leader vows return for showdown
By WILL WEISSERT and NESTOR IKEDAThe Associated PressSunday, July 5, 2009 8:59 AM
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduras braced for confrontation Sunday as ousted President Manuel Zelaya insisted he was coming home to reclaim his post, urging his supporters to mass at the airport for a showdown with the interim government in power since the army sent him into exile a week ago.
The poor Central American country's Roman Catholic archbishop urged Zelaya to stay away, warning that his return could spark bloodshed. The interim government stuck to its threat to arrest Zelaya and put him on trial despite near-universal international condemnation of the coup that removed him over his campaign to revise the constitution.
In Washington, the Organization of American States suspended Honduras as a member late Saturday, but Zelaya's replacement, Roberto Micheletti, already pulled the country out of the group over its ultimatum to restore Zelaya.
As more than 10,000 of his supporters protested Saturday near the heavily guarded presidential palace, Zelaya posted an audio message on the Internet urging loyalists to greet his arrival.
"We are going to show up at the Honduras International Airport in Tegucigalpa ... and on Sunday we will be in Tegucigalpa," Zelaya said in the taped statement carried Saturday on the Web sites of the Telesur and Cubadebate media outlets.
He implored supporters to remain peaceful.
"I ask all farmers, residents, Indians, young people and all workers' groups, businessmen and friends ... to accompany me on my return to Honduras," he said. "Do not bring weapons. Practice what I have always preached, which is nonviolence. Let them be the ones who use violence, weapons and repression."
"I hold the coup plotters responsible for the lives of each and every person," he said.
In comments to a local radio station, Zelaya said he would be accompanied by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, several foreign ministers and 300 journalists.
But Fernandez said only that "it's been agreed that the OAS will accompany" Zelaya on the trip, as she exited the diplomatic meeting in Washington.
Catholic Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez implored Zelaya not to confront the interim government amid the high tensions, saying in a statement broadcast Saturday that "your return to the country could unleash a bloodbath."
The country's new government has vowed to arrest Zelaya if he returns, on charges alleging 18 criminal acts including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since taking office in 2006.
Large crowds of Zelaya's critics have countered his supporters by staging their own daily demonstrations to back Micheletti, the congressional president who was named by lawmakers to finish out the final six months of the Zelaya's term.
Most of the ousted leader's supporters come from the working and middle classes of this impoverished nation, while his opponents are based in the ranks of the well-to-do - although the increasingly leftist approach of the wealthy rancher had eroded his popular support.
The military ousted Zelaya with the backing of Honduras' political elite, including the Supreme Court, Congress and Zelaya's own party. They say they kicked him out because he insisted on going through with a referendum on constitutional change that the Supreme Court ruled illegal.
Last Sunday's coup brought widespread criticism down on the Micheletti government, from U.S. President Barack Obama to Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chavez to the U.N. and the OAS.
Seeking to head off any escalation of the crisis, the OAS gave the Honduran government until Saturday to reinstate Zelaya, but Micheletti pointedly rejected the demand Friday night. "The OAS is a political organization, not a court, and it can't judge us," he said.
At the OAS's second emergency on Honduras in less than a week, the group's secretary-general told the meeting Saturday night that his visit to Honduras in a bid to restore Zelaya to the presidency had failed.
"It is very clear that in the de facto government, there is no willingness to change its conduct," Jose Miguel Insulza said in urging Honduras' suspension.
Thirty-three nations voted for the suspension, with Honduras abstaining. It was the first time the OAS suspended a member nation over a military coup since 1990, when Haiti was punished for Gen. Raoul Cedras' putsch against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Billboards proclaiming Micheletti the "legitimate and constitutional" president have begun to pop up, as have bumper stickers proclaiming "I love Honduras. I defend the constitution." The interim government has also taken to the radio and television airwaves with jingles, part of a campaign to win over those who have yet to choose sides.
"I'm just waiting for the military and the politicians to decide what happens to us," retiree Hilda Alvarez said Saturday. "I hope it's soon."
---
Will Weissert reported from Tegucigalpa and Nestor Ikeda from Washington. Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas and Marcos Aleman in Tegucigalpa contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Associated Press