Honduras isolated over president ouster
Updated on 29 June 2009
Honduras has come under pressure to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya, as Washington said the ouster was illegal and protesters took to the streets.
Police in the Honduran capital fired tear gas at stone-throwing supporters of Mr Zelaya, who was toppled in an army coup on Sunday.
Some 1,500 protesters, some of them masked and carrying sticks, taunted solders and burned tires just outside the gates of the presidential palace in a face-off with security forces.
Mr Zelaya, a leftist, was detained and sent into exile in a dispute over his push to extend presidential terms. The coup is Central America's biggest political crisis in decades.
Left-wing Latin American leaders led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced at a meeting in Managua, capital of neighbouring Nicaragua, that they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup.
President Barack Obama said the United States viewed the ouster as "not legal" and said his government would work with the Organisation of American States and others to reinstate Mr Zelaya.
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