Honduran favourite aims for Brazil's support

The favourite in Honduras' weekend presidential election said on Friday he will try to persuade the world and especially Brazil to recognize him if he wins to end Central America''s worst political crisis in decades.

Conservative Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, who has a clear lead over his closest rival in recent polls, urged Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to see a new Honduran president-elect as legitimate even though Sunday''s vote follows a June coup.

"We will be knocking at president Lula''s door and everyone else's to reestablish channels of friendship with all nations," Lobo, a wealthy farmer, told foreign correspondents.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Thursday that recognizing the Sunday election would be paramount to legitimizing the coup that toppled leftist President Manuel Zelaya.

Zelaya was thrown out of Honduras by soldiers on June 28, but he snuck back into the country to take refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa in September.

Security forces have clashed with pro-Zelaya protesters in the months since the coup and some analysts are worried violence could compromise the vote.

In the early hours of Friday, homemade explosives damaged four schools set up as voting centers in the northern industrial city of San Pedro Sula, police said. No one was wounded. 

Honduras has been shut out by foreign donors since the coup, and Brazil, the United States and Europe initially pushed hard for Zelaya's reinstatement.

Washington, which condemned the coup, has not taken an official position on the election but suggested it will support the outcome by saying recognition of the presidential election was not contingent on Zelaya''s reinstatement.

Divided region

The question of whether to back the vote and allow Honduras back into the international fold has divided the region. Lula's foreign policy adviser said this week that the United States risked souring relations with most of Latin America if it recognized the Honduras election.

Neither Zelaya nor de facto leader Roberto Micheletti -- both from the Liberal Party -- can run in the race.

Lobo, 61, said he was determined to overcome resistance to the vote from Zelaya''s close ally Venezuela, as well as the European Union, which has suspended aid to impoverished Honduras until the crisis is resolved.
"
If I have to go and knock on the King (of Spain's) door I will, immediately," said Lobo, who is running for the opposition National Party but belongs to the country''s ruling elite and hails from the same province as Zelaya.

Lobo, who narrowly lost the 2005 election to Zelaya, has a 16-point lead over Zelaya''s former vice president Elvin Santos, according to an October CID-Gallup poll.

Peruvian support

The US ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, said on Friday the new president-elect will need to seek support from foreign leaders. Honduras is facing severe economic trouble if it remains isolated.                                           

"The newly elected government will have a vested interest that the Micheletti government didn't have to engage with the international community," Llorens told reporters.                                           

Both Peru and Costa Rica suggested on Friday they were ready to recognize the election process.                                           

"If the elections in Honduras are carried out transparently ... we will recognize them," Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Garcia Belaunde said in Quito.                                           

Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who mediated talks to try to end the Honduran crisis, urged regional leaders to welcome the elections as a way out.