Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested by soldiers earlier on Sunday, is in Costa Rica and has asked for asylum, CNN’s Spanish-language channel reported, citing the Costa Rican government.
Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, had provoked a political crisis after seeking to hold a consultative vote on constitutional reforms that a court ruled was illegal.
Representatives of American nations are holding an emergency meeting Sunday at 1500 GMT to address the situation in Honduras where President Manuel Zelaya was arrested, the Organization of American States said.
An OAS official confirmed ambassadors were already holding private meetings just ahead of the emergency session at the regional body’s headquarters in Washington and that the Honduran ambassador to the OAS, Carlos Sosa Coello, was expected to speak at the gathering.
Zelaya’s personal secretary told reporters in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa that troops had arrested the president and surrounded his home on Sunday.
Coello told CNN that Zelaya had been kidnapped in a “coup d’etat” and that he was trying to confirm “whether (the president) was still alive.”
Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced Sunday’s arrest of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as a “coup d’etat” and alleged that the United States had a hand in his overthrow.
Speaking in Caracas, leftist leader Chavez urged US President Barack Obama to speak out about Zelaya’s arrest just hours ahead of a controversial constitutional referendum, snapping that “the Yankee empire had a lot to do” with developments in Honduras.
“I call on the president of the United States to issue a statement as we have, rejecting this affront, which not only goes against Honduras but against all the peoples of Latin America,” the Venezuelan leader declared, denouncing the action as a throwback to the past. “Troops were used to overthrow the government,” Chavez said. “It’s like so many coups that have taken place in Latin America over the past 100 years, against the wishes of the people and against a president who merely is trying to hold a popular vote,” he told Venezuelan television.
Chavez also blamed Honduras’s upper classes for the putsch, which he said “have turned Honduras into a ‘banana republic’, into a political, military and terror base for the North American empire.”
But US President Barack Obama said Sunday he was “deeply concerned” by reports of the overthrow of Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, and urged all parties to show respect for “democratic norms.”
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