QUITO: Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said Thursday he would not restore diplomatic relations with Honduras, in the wake of the June 2009 coup that ousted leftist president Manuel Zelaya.
"So long as those serving in the Honduran government participated in the coup outright and remain in complete impunity, we cannot restore relations with this government," Correa told reporters in the northwestern coastal city of Esmeraldas.
"Our position has always been the same" in that those responsible for Zelaya's overthrow should be punished, said Correa, among Latin America's staunchest leftist leaders.
Honduras's two-year isolation ended Wednesday when it was readmitted to the Organization of American States -- which groups the 34 independent states of the American continent but still excludes Cuba -- just four days after Zelaya returned home from his exile in the Dominican Republic.
Only Ecuador demurred, saying conditions were not yet appropriate for Honduras to return due to the Central American nation's poor human rights record and the fact that those behind the coup had not been punished.
Accused of seeking to tamper with the constitution to extend the single-term presidential limit, he was forced out at gunpoint on June 28, 2009 and put on a plane to Costa Rica.
The military coup was sanctioned by the legislature and the Supreme Court but left the country polarized between coup supporters and followers of Zelaya, who soon took to the streets in angry demonstrations.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
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