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FACTBOX: Increasing isolation for Honduras after coup

Sun Jul 5, 2009 2:42pm EDT

(Reuters) - Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya prepared to fly back home on Sunday, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with an interim government that has defied international pressure over the coup that deposed him.

Since Zelaya was taken at gunpoint from his home in a predawn raid on July 28 and whisked into exile by the military, the interim government of Roberto Micheletti has defied condemnation over his ouster.

Here are some of the measures governments have taken against Honduras since the coup:

* Hours after the coup, world leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez refused to recognize the new government sworn in by the Honduran congress after Zelaya was exiled. They declared Zelaya was the only legitimate president of Honduras.

* Latin American leftists withdrew their ambassadors and other Central American nations shut their borders to commercial traffic for 48 hours, costing the region some $61 million in trade, according to the head of the Honduran private business council. The European Union followed suit, pulling its members' envoys from the country.

* The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank paused all lending to Honduras until democracy was restored, a blow to one of the poorest countries in Latin America, heavily dependent on international aid, remittances from migrants living abroad and textile and coffee exports.

* In the strongest move yet by foreign governments to isolate the caretaker government, the OAS met into the early hours of July 5 in Washington and suspended Honduras after the interim authorities ignored an ultimatum to reinstate Zelaya. It was only the second time that the Western Hemisphere's top diplomatic body has taken such a step to sanction a member for violating the democratic charter.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg, Editing by Stacey Joyce)



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