Madrid/Tegucigalpa - Spain will not recognize Honduras' de facto government despite the Central American country's refusal to allow the Spanish ambassador to return unless it does so, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Monday. The ambassador had left Honduras, along with other European diplomats, following a June 28 coup that ousted president Manuel Zelaya.
Madrid wanted to send the ambassador back to aid mediation efforts, but Honduras said Spain first had to recognize the de facto government headed by Roberto Micheletti, according to Spanish media.
Moratinos told Spanish National Radio that Spain did not want its relations with the de facto government to deteriorate, but would not recognize it, while trusting that the ambassador could return to Honduras "as soon as possible."
Spain would keep up efforts to find a political solution to the Honduran crisis without creating more "tension," Moratinos said.
Honduras' de facto government overnight announced a decree restricting liberties in response to a call by Zelaya on his supporters to help him recover power.
Zelaya urged his supporters to launch a "final offensive" and to march to Tegucigalpa on Monday, the day marking three months from the coup that sent him into exile.
Zelaya made the call from the Brazilian embassy, where he took refuge on returning secretly to his country a week ago.
The de facto government said relations with Brazil were "broken" in reciprocity at Brazil having closed the Honduran embassy there.
De facto Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras said Honduras was giving Brazil 10 days to hand Zelaya over or to grant him asylum.
"That does not mean that Mr Zelaya will be left on the street or that we will enter the embassy, only that the diplomatic mission will be recognized as a private office of a foreign government," he explained.
The government decree, which was approved Saturday and made public late Sunday in a nationwide broadcast, authorizes police to dissolve non-authorized public meetings and demonstrations.
The government also banned statements violating "peace, public order or offending human dignity" and authorized the state telecommunications organ Conatel to suspend radio and television broadcasters.
Media close to Zelaya described the decree as signalling the "militarization" of Honduras.
The government wanted to close media supportive of Zelaya, said Esdras Amado Lopez and David Romero, directors of the pro-Zelaya Canal 36 and Radio Globo.
The Organization of American States (OAS) meanwhile protested the barring of its personnel from entering Honduras to prepare a visit of several Latin American foreign ministers and OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza.
"We deplore this decisión and regard it as incomprehensible, given that the Honduran de facto government itself had accepted" the two visits, Insulza commented.
The decisión hampered efforts to re-establish calm and to seek solutions to the Honduran conflict, Insulza complained.
