MANAGUA: Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya urged on Friday the Honduran soldiers to defend the democracy in the country by rejecting the coup made against him on June 28.

“I want to tell the soldiers from Honduras that the future of our country is on risk. Soldiers from my homeland: defend your democracy, reject this coup,” Zelaya said on Friday in Nicaragua before starting his return back home.

On the Nicaraguan border with Honduras, Zelaya requested policemen and soldiers to allow him return to his country, to return in peace for calm to be restored in Honduras.

“Let me hug my family, my mother, let me hug my people, let me exert my citizen’s right of not being in exile,” Zelaya said.

Zelaya gave a press conference to the press which is covering his return to Honduras, in Yalaguina community, some 30km from the Nicaraguan border with Honduras.

“I have ground and aerial means and I can enter today in Honduras by any border points in Guatemala, El Salvador or Nicaragua,” Zelaya said.

Zelaya also said that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega will join the caravan and will accompany him till an undetermined point.