Deposed President Manuel Zelaya returned to the Honduran border and announced he would set up camp there, despite calls from foreign leaders urging him not to force a confrontation with the government that ousted him.
Mr Zelaya arrived at a rural frontier crossing in Nicaragua and immediately grabbed a megaphone, shouting to a crowd of 150 supporters and about as many journalists. He vowed to wait near the border and demanded his family be allowed to meet him.
“We are going to stand firm,” Mr Zelaya told the crowd yesterday, complaining that the interim government had not allowed him to reunite with his family, who he had not seen since he was whisked at gunpoint from his home on June 28 and forced into exile.
“Today we are going to set up camps here, with water and food. We are going to stay here this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow morning,” he said.
Mr Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro, told CNN she was stopped at a roadblock on a road leading to the border and that police and soldiers would not let her and others pass.
Mr Zelaya is apparently going to commute back and forth between the camp and the nearby Nicaraguan town of El Ocotal.
But he said he probably would not try another border crossing like the brief, symbolic trip a few yards into Honduran territory he performed on Friday, saying he feared soldiers would attack his supporters.
About 50 soldiers manned a line about 100 metres inside Honduran territory, with a few Honduran police closer to the line.
By afternoon, the tents promised by Mr Zelaya had yet to show up, and his supporters sought shelter from afternoon rains under the eaves of border shops and ramshackle eateries.
On Friday, Mr Zelaya triumphantly lifted a chain marking the frontier and took a few strides into Honduran territory, where the interim government has charged him with violating the constitution and has vowed to arrest him.
He retreated into Nicaragua less than 30 minutes later. Soldiers did not approach him at the remote mountain border crossing.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called the trip “reckless” and said it would not help restore democratic and constitutional order.
Mr Zelaya is demanding he be reinstated as president following the coup, which has been widely condemned around the world.
His brief excursion a few feet into his homeland brought the Honduran political crisis no closer to a resolution — and irritated some foreign leaders who are trying to help him reclaim office.
AP