Chavez: Zelaya going home "in hours" despite talks

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya would return to his country "in the coming hours," casting doubt on the outcome of mediation talks set for Saturday.

A unilateral attempt by Zelaya to return home would fly in the face of threats to arrest him by the interim government that replaced him in the June 28 coup in Honduras.

It could also jeopardize internationally-backed efforts to broker a peaceful solution to Central America's worst political crisis since the Cold War. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias is due to host talks on Saturday to try to break the deadlock between the rival Honduran sides over the key issue of whether Zelaya can return to office.

"Zelaya said that in the coming hours he'll enter Honduras. We're behind him, we have to support him," Chavez, a leftist ally of Zelaya's, told reporters outside the presidential palace in Bolivia where he was meeting President Evo Morales.

Chavez, who is known for his incendiary rhetoric and dramatic outbursts, made the announcement of Zelaya's imminent return as several hundred supporters of the ousted president blocked a northern highway into the Honduran capital on Friday in renewed protests calling for his reinstatement.

Chavez, who had attended a meeting in Bolivia of leftist Latin American allies of Zelaya, gave no more details about how Zelaya intended to return home.

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Zelaya is currently in Nicaragua, which borders Honduras, and there was no immediate word from him on his plans.

The coup has been widely condemned by foreign governments, but the interim government argues that Zelaya's ouster was legitimate because of illegal efforts by him to lift presidential term limits.

A previous attempt by Zelaya to fly home on July 5 in a Venezuelan plane provided by Chavez was thwarted by Honduran troops who prevented the plane from landing in Tegucigalpa. At least one person was killed in clashes between troops and Zelaya supporters at the airport.

Zelaya accused the interim government on Thursday of sending troops to his property in the central province of Olancho to head off any bid by him to come home.

The ousted president, a logging magnate who was elected in 2005 and was due to leave power in 2010, has repeated almost daily since the coup that he intends to return home "any day".

But he had said Saturday's talks would be the last chance for the interim president who replaced him in the coup, Roberto Micheletti, to hand power back to him.

Micheletti, installed by Honduras' Congress after Zelaya's ouster, has so far ruled out any possibility of his return to office.

"We'll see what the coup leaders do. This is a country where almost all the roads are blocked, the country's paralyzed, it's an ungovernable country," Chavez said on Friday.

The Venezuelan leader has dismissed the mediation talks in Costa Rica as "dead before they started," and has accused the United States of being behind the coup that toppled his ally Zelaya -- a charge denied by Washington.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which has strongly condemned Zelaya's ouster, has urged the rival sides in the crisis to give the talks mediated by Arias a chance.

"We certainly think that all countries in the region should play a constructive role and no country in the region should encourage any action that would potentially increase the risk of violence either in Honduras or in surrounding countries," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington, when asked about Zelaya's reported plan to return home, without naming Chavez.

"That is why we support ultimately a peaceful negotiated solution. This is not something that the United States is going to impose," he added.

(Additional reporting by Carlos Quiroga in La Paz and Sue Pleming in Washington; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Frances Kerry)

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