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PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA BACK IN HONDURAS, SURROUNDED IN THE BRAZILIAN EMBASSY.

Article Excerpt
Politically, he is on Brazilian sovereign territory.=20 But, in the real world, President Manuel Zelaya is home in Honduras, holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa and, in the first moments after his return, surrounded by chaos in the streets outside. Eighty-seven days after his abduction at the hands of the Honduran military (see NotiCen, 2009-07-02), an inept though supportive international community had failed to return him to the office it insisted was his, so Zelaya took matters into his own hands...and feet. He walked home.

The de facto government vowed to arrest and try him if he exercised his right to return from exile, so the journey required more than a little stealth. "I had to use various strategies; I had to avoid a lot of obstacles. I had to avoid military checkpoints, crossing very close to the mountains, sometimes through the valleys," he told Al Jazeera by phone from the Brazilian Embassy. Zelaya said the head of the Army was allied with regime leader Roberto Micheletti, but the rank and file, he believed, was on his side. "There is a rupture in the morale of the Army; this will help in our quest for peace and dialogue."

Brazil stands in bold relief against the backdrop of timidity...