PANAMA CITY – Deposed Honduran President Mel Zelaya said on Wednesday he will delay his return to Tegucigalpa for 72 hours in line with the deadline set by the Organization of American States for his reinstatement.

“The countdown has begun with the aim of initiating a process for my return to Honduras,” Zelaya told reporters after arriving for the inauguration of Ricardo Martinelli as Panama’s president.

Zelaya had originally planned to return to Honduras on Thursday, accompanied by the presidents of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, and Ecuador, Rafael Correa; OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto.

Honduran soldiers, acting with the blessing of the country’s Congress, rousted Zelaya from his official residence before dawn last Sunday and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Lawmakers have justified Zelaya’s removal on the grounds that he threatened the constitutional order by trying to hold a non-binding referendum on his proposal for a national assembly next year to overhaul the country’s constitution.

Zelaya’s foes say he wants to change the charter so he can run for re-election, a charge he flatly denied Tuesday during a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.

“I am returning to civilian life, to the life of a citizen, not to politics,” he said after the U.N. General Assembly approved by acclamation an essentially symbolic resolution calling for his reinstatement.

Noting that the current Honduran constitution limits the president to a single four-year term, Zelaya said that any potential change would apply only to his successors.

Virtually every government in the Americas has condemned the coup in Honduras. The World Bank is withholding $270 million in loans to the poor Central American nation and the Pentagon announced Wednesday a suspension of joint activities with the Honduran military.

Not all of those rejecting Zelaya’s ouster have demanded his reinstatement, yet even governments and institutions with no particular fondness for the deposed head of state insist the political conflict in Honduras must be resolved democratically.

Honduras’s “interim” president, erstwhile congressional speaker Roberto Micheletti, said Tuesday that he was dispatching envoys to the United States to explain the reasons for Zelaya’s removal.

While offering no details of the mission, Micheletti said he had “faith in God” the representatives would “recover the confidence of those countries” and institutions that have denounced the removal of Zelaya.

Micheletti, who says November’s presidential election will take place as scheduled, has threatened that if Zelaya returned to Honduras, he would be arrested for “crimes” arising from his “interest in remaining in the government and for the arrogant attitude he adopted” in recent months.

Brushing off the threat of arrest, Zelaya said Tuesday that he was convinced the Honduran armed forces “will rectify” their involvement in the coup by restoring him to power.

Thousands packed into Tegucigalpa’s main square Tuesday to show support for Micheletti and repudiate Zelaya. Elsewhere in the capital, thousands of supporters of the ousted head of state marched to demand his return.


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