Zelaya gets foreign backing as seeks return to Honduras

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya won growing international support on Tuesday, with Argentina's president and the Organisation of American States planning to accompany him as he seeks to return to his country just days after being toppled in a dawn coup.

But the interim government's foreign minister said Zelaya would be arrested if he returned to Honduras.

Enrique Ortez told CNN's Spanish-language channel that Zelaya, who plans to return home on Thursday, had charges pending against him for violating the constitution and other crimes.

Zelaya was bundled into exile in Costa Rica by troops on Sunday. The coup in the impoverished coffee-producing country of 7 million -- the first in Central America since the Cold War -- was greeted by a tide of condemnation, from U.S. President Barack Obama to Zelaya's leftist allies in Latin America, led by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Zelaya had riled the armed forces, courts and Congress with his quest to change the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term. He also upset conservative elites with his growing alliance with Chavez, a fierce U.S. adversary.

Zelaya says he plans to go back to Honduras accompanied by the OAS chief, Jose Miguel Insulza. An Argentine government source said President Cristina Fernandez also planned to travel with him, building pressure on the interim leaders of Honduras to back down.

"The idea is to create a diplomatic shield," the source said.

But Ortez said, "as soon as he enters he will be captured. We have the warrants ready so that he stays in jail in Honduras and is judged according to the country's laws."

ANTI-ZELAYA PROTESTERS

In the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, several thousand anti-Zelaya protesters waving blue-and-white Honduran flags packed in a square to back the interim government and to protest against the return of a leader they say wants to follow Chavez's socialist model.

Pro-Zelaya protesters have clashed in the streets with security forces, but the capital was generally calm on Tuesday with traffic clogging streets and many stores, cafes and shops open for business.

Honduras' Congress named Roberto Micheletti, a conservative veteran of Zelaya's Liberal Party as caretaker president soon after Zelaya was pushed out.

But Zelaya's international support grew on Tuesday.

The U.N. General Assembly called on its 192 member states to recognise only Zelaya's government. In a resolution passed by consensus it condemned what it called a coup d'etat and demanded "the immediate and unconditional restoration of the legitimate and constitutional government" of Zelaya.

Zelaya told the assembly he had only tried to improve the lot of his country's poor but had been treated harshly by the Honduran army and business elite that has run the country for decades.

"No-one has put me on trial. No-one has called me to a court to defend myself, no-one has told me what the crime is," he said.

Obama said on Monday the coup was illegal and the White House said on Tuesday Zelaya is likely to meet U.S. State Department officials when he makes an expected visit to Washington for an OAS meeting later on Tuesday.

Further putting pressure on the interim government, the World Bank has "paused" all program lending to Honduras following the coup, the bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said on Tuesday.

"We're working closely with the OAS and looking to the OAS to deal with its handling of the crisis under its democratic charter," Zoellick told reporters in Washington. "In the process we have put a pause with our lending."

In Honduras, coffee output and exports appeared untouched by the turmoil as ports and roads remained open.

(Additional reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel, Mica Rosenberg, Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa and Guido Nejamkis in Buenos Aires, Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations, Editing by Frances Kerry)