Rio de Janeiro - Brazil's ambassador to Honduras said Tuesday that the arrival of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya at the embassy in Tegucigalpa was "a complete surprise."Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup on June 28, secretly returned to Honduras on Monday and has since being staying at the Brazilian embassy as a "guest."
"He showed up there and surprised everyone. There is speculation that he came from Guatemala, but it's speculation. We do not yet know how he got there, if he was in disguise, we don't know," ambassador Brian Michael Neele told the Brazilian news website G1.
Neele was in Brazil the day of the coup. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry ordered him not to return to Tegucigalpa until Zelaya was reinstated, and he has since been waiting for the crisis to end.
Honduras' de facto government on Tuesday accused Brazil of allowing Zelaya to turn its embassy into his "headquarters," from where he was trying to instigate an "uprising."
Brazil had "shamefully" allowed Zelaya to address a crowd from the embassy, urging Hondurans to break the law by coming to the capital in spite of a curfew being in force, Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena Alvarado said.
The minister said Honduras would give Brazil a deadline to grant Zelaya political asylum or hand him over for a trial in Honduras.
In the interview, Neele expressed his concern over the future of Honduras.
"We do not know what is going to happen. It is a country that is looking for a solution to a very serious problem. (They are) a very peaceful people, and I hope there is dialogue."
Brazilian political analyst Eliane Cantanhede, however, noted that despite the claims of being taken off guard, Brazilian authorities celebrated Zelaya's arrival at the embassy.
It showed "the leadership and the power as moderator that Brazil is gradually taking on" in the region.
"There were other more obvious destinations, like the Mexican embassy, for example, since Mexico is in several respects a country that is closer to Central America and that has (influence) in Honduras," Cantanhede told the daily Folha de Sao Paulo.
"But Brazil is not only more a politically half-way line between Washington and Caracas, but it is also a country that is rising in that region," the analyst said.
