Interim Honduras government digs in

By Pat Markey

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has no chance of returning to office after a coup last weekend and the caretaker government will not negotiate over the presidency, the interim foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Enrique Ortez, a French-educated lawyer appointed as foreign minister in an administration set up after the coup, told Reuters that Zelaya would be arrested if he came home even if he tries to arrive with a mission of presidents and the Organization of American States.

He said the interim government would seek to show that Zelaya was removed through a legal process.

Honduras is under intense international pressure to reinstate Zelaya, a leftist who was ousted by troops on Sunday after upsetting opponents with a plan to extend presidential term limits and his growing alliance with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Latin America's socialist firebrand.

The Washington-based OAS has given Honduras a 72-hour ultimatum to allow Zelaya back into office by this weekend or face suspension from the hemispheric group.

"As long as we are here there is no chance at all, not the remotest chance, that a government that ignored judicial order can return," Ortez said in an interview in the patio of his home in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

"We are not going to negotiate our national sovereignty or the presidency," he said.

Zelaya was detained and spirited out of the country to Costa Rica in a coup that has been widely condemned abroad. But his opponents at home say his removal was actually a transition of power because he defied the Supreme Court by trying to hold a vote on extending presidential term limits beyond a single four-year term. Magistrates had ruled the vote illegal and the military had refused to back it.

'LEGAL WAY'

Ortez dismissed the OAS warning over suspension and said a group of four member countries of the organization -- Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Canada -- would send representatives in a mission to observe the situation.

He said he had asked for an opportunity to defend the move to depose Zelaya.

However, in Washington, an OAS spokesman said that he was unaware of any plans to send a mission this week.

"We are going to show them all the evidence," Ortez said. He said the OAS would not throw Honduras out because Zelaya was ousted following a legal procedure.

"We're sure that we are not going to be expelled because we have done everything in a legal way."

The interim president, conservative Roberto Micheletti, is backed by the country's business and political elite and has said he plans to stay on until after an election in November.