OAS set to suspend Honduras after coup

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Organization of American States was likely to suspend Honduras on Saturday after a caretaker government refused to restore President Manuel Zelaya who was toppled in a military coup last weekend.

Honduras' interim rulers who took power after the coup have rejected an OAS demand to restore Zelaya, and defiantly renounced the OAS charter in an apparent preemptive move.

But an OAS official said such a renunciation was not valid, since the Honduras authorities were not a legitimate government, while OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said there were few options other than to suspend Honduras.

"The suspension is complicated by the effects it will have, above all, from the economic point of view in times of crisis," Insulza told Chilean radio. "It is not something to be undertaken lightly, but there is not much alternative."

The Washington-based OAS was set to meet in an extraordinary session. The meeting was due to begin at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) but was pushed back to later in the day, possibly until after 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), an OAS official said.

Zelaya, a leftist, was ousted by troops and exiled to Costa Rica, creating Central America's gravest political crisis since the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.

He had upset the ruling elite, including members of his own Liberal Party, with what his critics say was an illegal attempt to lift presidential term limits and by establishing closer ties with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a U.S. adversary.

Honduras, an impoverished coffee and textile exporter, would be only the second country suspended by the Western Hemisphere's top diplomatic body after Cuba, which was barred in 1962 as Fidel Castro took the island toward communism.