TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – The Army overthrew the Honduras president Manuel Zelaya Sunday due to his attempts to achieve a re-election and took him by force to Costa Rica, while leaders of Latin America and Europe demanded the restoration of the president in power.
Soldiers dragged Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in the early hours of the morning of the presidential residence to get on a plane that left San Jose, the Costa Rican capital.
The coup, the first in Central America since the Cold War and supported by the Supreme Court, sparked concern in the world.
The U.S. president, Barack Obama called for respecting democracy in Honduras, the European Union called upon to restore Zelaya and President Hugo Chavez said that with their allies the troglodyte coup would be aborted.
I woke up the shot, I got virtually sleepwear, said Zelaya by Telesur television network, ensuring that the military led to death threats and a half-Costa Rica.
The president accused six or seven of the economic elite of being behind the dismissal.
The army overthrew Zelaya after he dismissed last week to Chief of Staff because he refused to help you organize a referendum, declared illegal by the Justice of the possibility of extending the presidential term of four years.
Attempts to make the consultation pieces made political stability that the country remained impoverished since the end of military dictatorship in early 1980 and divided the institutions of Honduras.
The Supreme Court ordered last week to return Zelaya the chief of staff, General Romeo Vasquez, something the president said was an attempted coup against him.
The court said Sunday that fought the order to the Armed Forces Zelaya expelled for his insistence on the referendum.
If an inquiry leads to a coup and cause the president to seize and forcibly remove empellones to his country, then democracy in which we live, Zelaya said at a press conference in Costa Rica.
Congress examined PRESIDENT
The legislator of the opposition National Party Rigoberto Chang told Reuters that the unicameral Congress voted on Sunday to head the parliament, Roberto Micheletti, as interim president.
The Congress is the most Zelaya of the Liberal Party with 62 lawmakers — many of whom did not support the consultation, followed by the opposition National Party with 55 seats and there are 11 legislators from smaller parties.
If Micheletti oath or Peleletti or Gafetti or Goriletti, it overthrew. I overthrew, and I say, said Venezuela's Chavez in a televised address.
We will do all everything we have to do to make Manuel Zelaya is restored in his post said and said that members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) hold an emergency meeting in Managua in the coming hours the situation in Honduras.
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called for the immediate restitution of Zelaya and his argentina, Cristina Fernandez, said that will require compliance with the OAS Democratic Charter.
also called the Colombian government to reestablish constitutional order in Honduras.
The Brazilian Government vehemently condemns the way the military action that resulted in the departure of the president of Honduras, he said in a statement the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil.
The Honduran president, according to the survey saw a drop in their support to a level of 30 percent, from Costa Rica called for its supporters to make a peaceful resistance to the perpetrator of democracy.
I ask the people of Honduras calm, but also to defend their democracy and their rights. The people of Honduras have to be calm so that we talk about non-violence, there are ways of protesting without weapons said Zelaya to Telesur.
In Tegucigalpa, the police launched tear gas against supporters of Zelaya who were demonstrating in the city center, according to a local radio and the official television channel ceased broadcasting.
Two warplanes mending the skies of the capital on Sunday with equipment and military tanks surrounded the president's residence, where about 2,000 supporters of protesting Zelaya, and there was no electricity service in some parts of the city .
Many Hondurans were scared.
I'm going for me and my house because I'm afraid that something will happen, watch as the planes go around and say that the military are mobilizing, to know what will happen, said Frank Lopez, 23 years, while closing the business of serving food in Tegucigalpa.
The Organization of American States (OAS) began an extraordinary meeting this Sunday to discuss and Honduras, during the meeting, the ambassador of Venezuela to the agency said the Honduran Foreign Minister would have been kidnapped by soldiers who have also attacked diplomats from Cuba and Bolivia.
Honduras , with 7 million inhabitants, is one of the poorest countries in the continent and its economy dependent on remittances, exports of coffee and textiles, has been hard hit by the economic crisis.
The Zelaya mandate ends in February 2010 and, according to local media, the election authority said on Sunday that the presidential election of November 29 remain.
(With additional reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel in Caracas, Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Armando Tovar in Mexico City, Guido Nejamkis in Buenos Aires)
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