TEGUCIGALPA – Deposed Honduran President Mel Zelaya called Thursday for continuing peaceful resistance to the June 28 coup that toppled his government and forced him into exile.

“Compatriots, the president of the republic calls on you to stay firm and committed to struggling against the coup, to struggling for our democracy, without hiding the truth, to struggling peacefully for our ideas, with a committed people there is no weapon, no army, no maneuver capable of stopping them,” he said in a statement.

Zelaya, who slipped back into the country Sept. 21 and remains holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, also asked Hondurans to devote the day of the Nov. 29 presidential election to “impugning and denouncing” what he called “electoral fraud.”

The ousted leader, echoed by most foreign governments, says a free and fair vote is impossible given the repression imposed by the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, which is blamed for at least a dozen deaths and numerous other human rights abuses.

“It is an anti-democratic electoral maneuver, repudiated by large sectors of the public, to shield the material and intellectual authors of the coup d’etat and pretend to form a democratic continuity that does not exist,” Zelaya said

The elections “have no legality, do not enjoy international support, especially from the OAS (Organization of American States) and the United Nations,” the statement continued.

“All countries have officially said they do not recognize this electoral process, except the United States of America, which speaks with ambiguity,” Zelaya said.

The U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs said Wednesday at the end of a visit to Honduras that Washington supports both the presidential election and the now-fractured accord meant to resolve the crisis sparked by the coup.

“Nobody has the right to take from the Honduran people the right to vote, to elect their leaders,” Craig Kelly said, emphasizing that the United States remained committed “to working to implement the accord.”

During his two-day visit, Kelly met separately with Zelaya and Micheletti to review implementation of the pact signed Oct. 30 by representatives of the two men.

Zelaya pronounced the pact dead early this month after Micheletti pressed ahead with formation of national unity government before Congress addressed the matter of restoring the legitimate president.

Critics say the de facto regime was emboldened when Kelly’s then-superior, Thomas Shannon, said early this month that Washington would recognize the election winner regardless of whether Zelaya was reinstated.

OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza has ruled out sending OAS election observers to Honduras under the current circumstances.

And most members of the OAS and the Rio Group, a hemispheric club that excludes the United States and Canada, say they won’t recognize the elections as valid without Zelaya’s reinstatement beforehand.

Kelly said Wednesday that “an important part for the United States, in implementing the accord, is the principle of restoration of the democratic constitutional order following the coup d’etat that occurred on June 28.”

The day before, however, leaders of the Honduran Congress scheduled the debate on Zelaya’s reinstatement for Dec. 2, after the election to choose his successor and less than two months from the end of his term.

Micheletti contends Zelaya’s ouster was not a coup, insisting that the troops who dragged him out of the presidential palace and put him on a plane to Costa Rica were simply enforcing a Supreme Court ban on the president’s planned non-binding plebiscite on the idea of revising the constitution.

But while coup leaders and their apologists accuse Zelaya of seeking to extend his stay in office, any potential constitutional change to allow presidential re-election would not have taken place until well after the incumbent stepped down in January. EFE