Honduras' de facto government will only allow ousted president Manuel Zelaya to leave the country if he signs a letter dropping his demand to be reinstated, the leftist said today.
Mr Zelaya had planned to leave his refuge in the Brazilian Embassy last night for Mexico, but the trip was aborted when he refused to go into exile on the government's terms because he wants the right to campaign for his return to power from abroad.
"There was a letter that they wanted me to sign and I refused to sign it. It was to renounce the mandate which the people gave me to be president until January 27," Mr Zelaya told Radio Globo, referring to the date at which his term was due to end before he was deposed in a June 28th coup.
Oscar Raul Matute, the interim interior minister, said Mexico had filed paperwork asking that Zelaya be granted safe conduct out of Honduras but failed to include whether he would be traveling to Mexico recognized only as a Honduran citizen being given refuge or as a president. He said Mexico was asked to file new documents.
"If the government of Mexico wishes to give him asylum, we will consider that petition as long as that petition fulfills all the requirements," Mr Matute told CNN en Espanol.
That was a different take on the situation than offered earlier in the evening by a spokesman for the Honduran Foreign Ministry, Milton Mateo.
Mateo also said Mexico had asked for a safe-conduct pass for Zelaya, who has been charged by the interim government with abuse of power, but he said the pass had been signed and would be delivered to the Brazilian Embassy. Zelaya said he hadn't received it.
Western Hemisphere countries united to condemn president Zelaya's removal from power but are divided on whether to recognize Lobo's election.
The United States, which cut off some aid over the coup, and a few countries in Latin America have said Hondurans had the right to choose a new leader in regular elections that had been scheduled before Zelaya's overthrow.
Other nations, however, including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, have rejected the election, saying that would legitamize Central America's first coup in two decades.