Zelaya, in Peaceful Mission, to Arrive in Honduras Early this Afternoon

By Al Giordano

In a an interview late last night with TeleSur, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said “he will leave from the United States to Honduras between 9 and 10 a.m., estimated to arrive in the Central American nation between 1 and 2 p.m.”

He will land at the Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa which yesterday was surrounded by 200,000 peaceful anti-coup protesters who want their Constitutional government restored.

To the Honduran people, he said:

“Do not use violence. We are going to restore the peace, the harmony among Hondurans. The mission is peaceful. It is to restore peace and order and mutual respect among Hondurans.”

Asked about the suggestion offered by ambassadors of Canada and Co sta Rica to not enter his country yet and delay his trip, he responded with irony: “I could delay until January 27” (of 2010), the date that his term ends. “I hope the people who have come from the countryside, the states and towns will accompany us.”

In related news, after the Organization of American States (OAS) voted last night to expel Honduras from the organization – the vote was 33 in favor, 0 against and 0 abstentions - Argentina President Cristina Kirchner took the microphone at the OAS session in Washington, DC, and said that it had been decided that she and two other American presidents – Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay – who were ready to travel with Zelaya to Honduras would not be accompanying him, to “avoid that our presence be manipulated… It is important that (OAS chief Jose Miguel) Insulza goes with Zelaya to avoid the manipulation of information. This is not a matter of ideology but of the restoration of democracy.”

“Do not fear, said David,” Zelaya told TeleSur. “You, the international press, are my security. You, and also the people… I’m left with God and the people. I think that’s enough.”

There has been a lot of spin back and forth by some – including the Honduran coup regime and the country’s Catholic cardinal – of Orwellian proportions and it goes generally like this: that if there is violence (which is to say, if armed Honduran police or military shoot at protesters that surround the airport to receive the man they elected president, or if harm should come of Zelaya or his delegation), it will be “Zelaya’s fault.”

But history provides zero examples of when a regime shooting at its own people was judged as somehow justified. The side with the guns and the snipers (see photo from the same airport, yesterday, above and below) is always responsible when its triggers are pulled. The Honduran people and the world will recognize any coup state aggression as such.

The wild cards today are whether the Honduran coup regime will use Zelaya’s return, and its vowed arrest and incarcelation of the president, as a pretext for assassination or massacre, and whether its Armed Forces are all really on its side. There have been situations like this - in Venezuela 2002, in Ukraine 2004 - when rank-and-file soldiers have dressed themselves in glory by refusing to carry out an authoritarian regime’s orders to repress, and instead, in a moment of crisis, used their enforcement powers to restore a democratically elected government.

The Narco News team will be reporting all day on these historic events. Refresh for frequent updates.

Update: Here's the TeleSur live feed.

Update II: Reuters reports:

TEGUCIGALPA, July 5 (Reuters) - Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya will not be allowed to land in the country if he attempts to fly back a week after he was ousted by troops, the interim government said on Sunday.

"I have ordered that he not be allowed back in, come what may," Enrique Ortez, the caretaker government's foreign minister said when asked about allowing Zelaya's aircraft to land. "We cannot allow recklessness, that a president of the republic dies, that a president of the republic is wounded, that anyone dies."

Whoa! And right up through yesterday the coup regime was talking tough about an arrest warrant and 18 hastily assembled charges against the President, but now it fears his setting foot on national territory?

Somebody just blinked in this game of chicken.

The Honduran Constitution is quite clear on this matter:

Article 81: "All persons have the right to circulate freely, leave, enter, and remain in national territory."

Once again, the coup regime demonstrates its absolute disregard for the Constitution it claims to be defending.

Update III: Meanwhile, in another "people power" conflict across the globe, the highest council of Iranian clerics, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom, has just declared Iran's elections of last month to be illegitimate. Our priority today is full coverage of the crisis on our beat of América, in Honduras, but just in case anybody mistakenly thought all was lost in Iran, history is churning there, too.

Update IV: Regarding the revelation that the big bad brave coup regime isn't so courageous after all, and now threatens to prohibit that the airplane of its "most wanted criminal" from landing, here are some scenarios of how this could play out:

1. The plane lands anyway.

2. The coup regime blocks the runway with trucks or tanks, the plane turns around and leaves national airspace, landing in El Salvador or Nicaragua.

3. The coup regime blocks the runway with trucks or tanks, but Zelaya's plane has a Plan B and lands in a different airfield in the country.

4. The plane not only lands in a different airfield, but it was a head fake all along, and it lands at one of the three Honduran Air Force bases (say, in Ceiba, where the battalion is rumored to be against the coup), and then a whole 'nother chapter begins with elements of the Armed Forces turning their guns around.

Nobody knows what will happen, but it's unlikely that Zelaya and his delegation don't have a Plan B up their sleeve.

By the way, the air traffic control tower radio at Toncontin International Airport is busy (I'm listening to it right now) which indicates that coup regime claims that it has closed the airport to all traffic are false.

Update V: On the other hand, American Airlines and Taca have cancelled their flights today in and out of Toncontin, reports DiarioCoLatino.com.