Zelaya aide says coup plane stopped at Honduras base with US troops on way out of country

Aide: Zelaya plane stopped at base with US troops

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A top official in Honduras’ ousted government charges there was U.S. involvement in the coup that deposed Manuel Zelaya, saying the plane that flew him into exile stopped at an airfield manned by American troops.

U.S. officials declined immediate comment. Washington has opposed the coup, cut off millions of dollars in aid to the Central American nation and demanded Zelaya be returned to office.

Patricia Valle, who served as Zelaya’s deputy foreign minister, says the Honduran military aircraft took off from the capital’s Toncontin airport, then landed to take on fuel at the Soto Cano base before heading to Costa Rica. She says Zelaya stayed on the plane during the stop.

Soto Cano, also known as Palmerola, is a Honduran military base that is home to at least 500 U.S. troops engaged in counter-narcotics operations and other missions in Central America.

Valle charged Saturday that the stop at Palmerola showed U.S. officials at some level were complicit in the June 28 coup, although she gave no evidence that American personnel at the base interacted with the Honduran military officials on the plane or that they even knew Zelaya was there.

“Zelaya was taken to Palmerola,” Valle told The Associated Press. “The United States was involved in the coup against Zelaya.”

She didn’t offer any proof for that assertion and stressed that she didn’t believe the highest levels of the Obama administration were involved.

Valle made the allegation in response to a question about a report in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo saying Zelaya spoke about stopping at the base and raised suspicions about U.S. complicity during a meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday.

Silva’s office could not confirm Zelaya’s remarks during the meeting. However, the deposed president mentioned his concerns to reporters in Brazil.

“The Obama administration has been firm in condemning the coup and demanding my restitution. I do not see reasons to believe that the Obama administration has two faces,” Zelaya said last week. “Now, there are some elements of the CIA that could have been involved. When they took me by plane to Costa Rica, it was a short flight but the plane made a stop at the Palmerola air base to refuel. Palmerola is a base administered by Honduran and U.S. troops. If it was a short flight, some 40 minutes, why did they have to refuel at Palmerola base?

State Department spokesman Fred Lash said Sunday the department was not aware of the claim. Joint Task Force-Bravo, the military unit that operates at the base, and the U.S. Southern Command did not return calls.

Palmerola was used by the United States during the Central American civil wars of the 1980s. U.S. Air Force personnel are responsible for maintaining the airfield and share air traffic control duties with Honduran authorities, according to the Joint Task Force-Bravo Web site.

Zelaya has increasingly voiced his frustration with the U.S. government for failing to impose tougher penalties on the coup-installed government.

Washington has suspended millions of dollars in military and development aid to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. But it has stopped short of imposing trade sanctions that could cripple the Honduran economy, which is highly dependent on exports to the United States.

The government of interim President Roberto Micheletti is trying to withstand international pressure to restore Zelaya before scheduled Nov. 29 presidential elections. It insists Zelaya was legally removed from office after violating court orders to call off a referendum asking voters whether they would support rewriting the constitution.

Micheletti voiced his own anger over Washington’s stance on the coup, saying he hoped that U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens would not return to Honduras from a trip abroad. The U.S. Embassy has said Llorens left Honduras temporarily for personal reasons and has not been withdrawn from his post.

“I understand he is on vacation, so I hope he doesn’t come back,” Micheletti said Saturday during a meeting with more than 3,000 army reservists in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.

Associated Press writers Alexandra Olson in Mexico City, Alan Clendenning in Sao Paulo and Kathia Martinez in Tegucigalpa contributed to this report.