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Ousted Zelaya on Honduras border, criticizes U.S.

Other News Materials 26 July 2009 06:30 (UTC +04:00)
Ousted Zelaya on Honduras border, criticizes U.S.

Defying U.S. criticism, ousted President Manuel Zelaya returned for a second day to Honduras' land border to try to put pressure on the coup leaders who threw him out of the country last month, Reuters reported.

In a move that risked alienating his most powerful ally in his bid to return to power, Zelaya also said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not adequately informed about Honduras' "repressive regime".

Clinton criticized Zelaya as "reckless" when he came to this town on the Honduran border with Nicaragua on Friday and took a few steps on Honduran soil as police and soldiers with orders to arrest him stood just yards away .

He returned on Saturday and insisted he would not give up his fight to regain power, although he showed little appetite for a confrontation with security forces, saying he had held back from entering Honduras to avoid provoking a massacre.

"You know that if I get close and they want to arrest me, people will defend me and there will be a massacre," he told reporters, sitting on the hood of a white jeep.

The United States, the United Nations and Latin American presidents have roundly condemned Zelaya's forced removal from power on June 28 and are demanding he be reinstated.

U.S. President Barack Obama has cut $16.5 million in military aid to Honduras and threatened to slash economic aid.

But he has yet to take measures directly against the coup leaders, and there are tensions between Washington and Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's anti-American and socialist president, Hugo Chavez.

Zelaya has asked Obama to take tougher measures against the de facto government, and he said on Saturday that Clinton was not fully aware of its repressive policies.

"I think she has to be given the correct information so that she comes to see what is happening in Honduras and her words are to complain about the coup leaders, not the heroic people that are resisting and accompanying me so that things return to normal," he said.

The crisis has put Obama in a difficult position. He does not want to continue a tradition of U.S. support for rightist coups in Latin America, but is uncomfortable with Zelaya's own democratic credentials and some Republicans in Congress say he has already done too much for the ousted leftist.

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