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Blocked runway thwarts Zelaya return to Honduras

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The New York Times

Published: July 6, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The ousted Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, swept over Honduras Sunday evening as crowds of his supporters clashed with soldiers and riot police at the airport.

But after his plane swooped in low over the airport and cheers erupted from the crowds below, it veered away.

"The runway's blocked," he said in an interview from sky that was broadcast over loudspeakers at the airport. "There's no way I can land."

Zelaya instead headed for El Salvador, and vowed to try again today or Tuesday in his high-stakes effort to return to power in a country where all branches of government have lined up against him.

As his plane left Honduras, an air force jet and helicopter circled above the airport, emphasizing the interim government's control of the situation and bringing to a close a dramatic episode that had held the country in suspense much of day.

The leaders who expelled Zelaya in an early-morning coup last Sunday had bluntly said that the plane carrying the deposed president and other aircraft accompanying it would be denied permission to land.

But Zelaya, vowing to return home to recover his presidency, boarded a plane in Washington on Sunday afternoon with the U.N. General Assembly president, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, and a small group of advisers and others.

Crowds of Zelaya's supporters ringed the airport on Sunday evening, demanding that he be allowed to return to the country and the presidency to which he had been elected.

Soldiers stood in formation at one end of the runway and in trenches dug into a hillside, firing into the air and setting off tear gas, while a helicopter hovered overhead.

As hundreds of people tried to break down the fences to enter the airport grounds, soldiers fired into the crowd.

A least one person was killed and two were badly wounded, a medic and emergency services at the airport said, according to Reuters.

Adding to the drama, Zelaya was giving interviews from the air as he approached Central America. "No one can obligate me to turn around," he told Telesur, a Venezuelan network that had reporters on the plane. "The constitution prohibits expelling Hondurans from the country. I am returning with all of my constitutional guarantees."

The presidents of Equador, Paraguay and Argentina, as well as Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the OAS, were flying in a separate plane, and they had plans to land only if Zelaya's plane landed safely.

As Zelaya's plane neared the airport, Zelaya addressed the military directly on live television, asking soldiers to return their loyalty to them "in the name of God, in the name of the people, and in the name of justice."

About 5:25 p.m., his plane swept in low over the airport, and the crowd erupted in cheers. But the plane flew past the airport and circled around the capital.

Despite the anticlimax of the airport drama, diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis seemed to move forward.

Earlier in the day, the interim president, Roberto Micheletti - who once resided in Tampa and whose brother still does - said he was willing to negotiate with the Organization of American States, the group that ousted Honduras on Saturday night for forcibly ousting the president.

Micheletti said he was concerned that Zelaya's arrival in the country would cause violence. Awaiting him upon return, Micheletti said, are 18 arrest warrants for treason, abuse of authority and other charges. The new government said Zelaya had broken the law by pushing ahead, even when the courts ordered him not to, with a referendum on whether to change the country's constitution.

A senior Obama administration official said that the United States, worried about the worsening tensions on the streets of Honduras, was also beginning its own diplomatic efforts.

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