Honduras leaders under pressure as U.S. revokes visas

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras' coup leaders came under new pressure on Tuesday to allow ousted President Manuel Zelaya's return to power as the United States revoked visas for four members of the de facto government.

Washington has refused to recognize the government led by Roberto Micheletti, who took over when Zelaya was toppled in a June 28 coup, and it already had cut $16.5 million in U.S. military aid to the Central American country.

Zelaya had asked President Barack Obama to revoke U.S. visas for the coup leaders and he quickly welcomed the move.

"They are isolated, they are surrounded, they are alone," Zelaya said of the coup leaders.

"This is a coup that has been dead from the start, so they will have to abandon their position of intransigence in the coming hours," he said in Nicaragua, near the Honduran border.

The de facto Honduran government, backed by the Supreme Court and Congress, has so far not bent to international condemnation of the coup. It insists that Zelaya cannot come back and serve his remaining six months in office.

Zelaya, an ally of Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez, was ousted as he sought a referendum vote to change the constitution, a move the Supreme Court ruled illegal. Zelaya's critics say he was trying to extend presidential term limits so he could be re-elected, but he denies the claims.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has mediated talks between both sides but the negotiations so far have failed.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said official diplomatic visas had been revoked for four individuals. "We don't recognize Roberto Micheletti as the president of Honduras, we recognize Manuel Zelaya," he said.

Kelly did not name those affected but said the diplomatic visas of others in government also were being reviewed.

Representative Connie Mack, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who visited Honduras over the weekend, told Reuters it was his understanding that two of the people who had their U.S. visas revoked were Tomas Arita Valle, the Supreme Court justice who signed the order for Zelaya's arrest, and Jose Alfredo Saavedra, president of the Honduran Congress.

A diplomat in Washington said the officials affected also included a minister in the de facto government.

EUROPEAN UNION STEPS

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said during a visit to Venezuela he would ask the European Union to take similar steps against the interim government. The EU has already suspended all budgetary support payments for Honduras.

The Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank have frozen loans in a move the interim government says will cost $200 million in 2009 -- a blow to the coffee and textile exporter that already is one of Latin America's poorest countries.

Zelaya in recent days had questioned whether the U.S. government was doing enough to push for his return, and also called for a ban on the coup leaders' bank transactions.

Zelaya said as many as 1,000 of his supporters have made the trek to join him in Nicaragua, dodging road blocks and a curfew in the border region of Honduras.

Zelaya briefly crossed the border into Honduras last Friday but stepped back from security forces waiting to arrest him, saying he wanted to avoid a massacre. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described his actions as "reckless" and not helpful to the negotiation process.

Julia Sweig, a Latin America specialist at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said suspending visas would hurt since "they need to be here (Washington) to press their case and maintain their lobbying efforts."

The country's de facto rulers declared on Tuesday an official "Day of Prayer for Peace," going on state television to urge Hondurans: "Let us all pray for our Honduras."

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Susan Cornwell, Sue Pleming and Tim Gaynor in Washington, Mica Rosenberg, Marco Aquino in Honduras and Ivan Castro in Nicaragua; Editing by Will Dunham)