• Leftist president Manuel Zelaya exiled to Costa Rica
• Obama calls for calm after troops strike at dawn

The army in Honduras has ousted and exiled its leftist president, Manuel Zelaya, , in Central America’s first military coup since the cold war, after he upset the army by trying to seek another term in office.

Barack Obama and the EU expressed concern after troops came at dawn for Zelaya, an ally of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist president, and took him away from his residence.

Speaking on Venezuelan state television, Chávez, who has long championed the left in Latin America, said he would do everything necessary to reverse the coup against his close ally. He said he would respond militarily if his envoy to Honduras was attacked or kidnapped.

“I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert,” he said on state television.

Chávez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the coup.

If a new government was sworn in it would be defeated, Chávez said. “We will bring them down, we will bring them down, I tell you,” he said.

Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, said he would support military action if his country’s diplomats or those of its allies were threatened.

A military plane flew Zelaya to Costa Rica. CNN’s Spanish language channel said he had asked for asylum there.

Pro-government protesters burned tyres in front of the presidential palace in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, and two fighter jets flew over the city.

Honduras, an impoverished country, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s, but Zelaya’s move to change the constitution to allow him another term split the country’s institutions.

Zelaya sacked the military chief, General Romeo Vásquez, last week for refusing to help him run an unofficial referendum, due to be held today, on extending the four-year term limit on Honduran presidents. Zelaya told Venezuela-based Telesur television station that he was “kidnapped” by soldiers and called on Hondurans to resist the coup peacefully.

The EU condemned the military action and Obama called for calm. Honduras was a staunch US ally in the 1980s when Washington helped Central American governments fight leftwing guerrillas.

“As the Organisation of American States (OAS) did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter,” Obama said in a statement. “Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior US administration official told reporters during a conference call yesterday: “We recognise Zelaya as the duly elected and constitutional president of Honduras. We see no other.” A second official on the same conference call said the US backed OAS efforts to forge a resolution condemning Zelaya’s ousting, and calling for him to be reinstated.

At a meeting of the OAS in Honduras this month, Zelaya condemned America’s refusal to support Cuba’s return to the 34-member group. The OAS suspended Cuba in 1962 after Castro’s revolution.

The Honduran congress last night voted in the congressional president Roberto Micheletti as the new leader to replace Zelaya, citing constitutional articles that say the head of congress assumes the presidency in such cases.

Congress earlier had approved a supposed letter of resignation from Zelaya, but Zelaya said the document was false.

The country’s supreme court last week ordered Zelaya to reinstate Vásquez as military chief. The court said it had told the army to remove the president.

“It acted to defend the rule of law,” the court said in a statement read on Honduran radio.

Honduras, with a population of 7 million is a major drug trafficking transit point. The economy depends on coffee and textile exports as well as money sent back by Honduran workers abroad. There was no immediate sign that the unrest would affect coffee production. Reuters