July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said he’s plotting his return to the Central American nation and called for “strong” action from the U.S. to help restore him to power.

“Their words are strong,” Zelaya said today during an interview in the lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Panama. “We’re going to see now if their actions are strong.”

The military ousted Zelaya early on June 28 after he ignored a Supreme Court ruling that overturned his firing of the armed forces chief. Interim President Roberto Micheletti said he is open to talks with Zelaya, though the deposed president would still face charges of treason and abuse of power if he returned to the country.

Zelaya, 56, said that some in the military still support him. He declined to give details of his plans to return to Honduras this weekend, saying they must be kept secret from Micheletti and the military. He denied statements by the new government that he signed a resignation letter before he was forced to leave the country.

“If they had held me at gunpoint I wouldn’t have signed. I would have said: Look, shoot!” said Zelaya, who was wearing a brown jacket over a white shirt.

OAS Support

The secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, will travel to Honduras tomorrow to meet with the new government and seek to restore Zelaya to office.

Insulza has been holding “intense conversations” with officials in Honduras and elsewhere, the OAS said in a statement.

A U.S. State Department spokesman warned that an early return to Honduras by Zelaya could be an obstacle to resolving the crisis.

The U.S. has suspended some aid to Honduras while it evaluates whether the removal of Zelaya meets the definition of a military coup under American law.

“We’ve taken some actions to hit the pause button on assistance programs which we would be legally required to terminate” if it is found to have been a military coup, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters today in Washington.

“We would discourage any actions that would prove to be an obstacle to this process reaching its desired outcome, which of course is the restoration of Manuel Zelaya in power,” Kelly said.

Delayed Return

Zelaya has already once postponed his return, originally slated for today. Instead, he will travel to Nicaragua or El Salvador tonight.

Hundreds of protesters who back Zelaya marched past the offices of Honduras’s congress in the capital Tegucigalpa today.

“We want to return the president to power. He was able to bring benefits to the people,” said Danny Mendoza, 39, a physical education teacher from the town of Olanchito. “We will never give this cause up.”

Local television stations also reported today that demonstrations in support of Micheletti were taking place in Choluteca, to the south of the capital.

Not Afraid

Zelaya is “not afraid” of standing trial, the Honduran Ambassador to Panama, Juan Alfaro Posadas, said last night. The deposed president is willing to negotiate with anyone who wants to cooperate, Posadas told reporters in Panama City.

Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz said in an interview yesterday that the military acted under judicial orders when it deposed Zelaya, rejecting the view of President Barack Obama and other leaders that he was toppled in a coup.

Zelaya received backing June 30 from the United Nations General Assembly, which called for his reinstatement and asked that no government recognize Micheletti as the legitimate president. The U.S. was a co-sponsor of the resolution.

The U.S. joined 33 other countries in an emergency session of the Organization of American States to demand Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Late today, Argentina granted diplomatic asylum to Honduras’s Minister of the President’s Office, Enrique Flores Lanza, according to an e-mailed statement from the Foreign Ministry’s office. He is currently at the Argentine embassy in Tegucigalpa, the statement said.

“Eighty percent of the nation agrees with what happened,” Micheletti said. “I won’t allow people to call this a coup. This was a constitutional succession that happened after the Supreme Court took action.”

-- With assistance from Jens Erik Gould in Mexico City, Matthew Walter in Panama City, Janine Zacharia in Washington, Joshua Goodman in Rio de Janeiro, Blake Schmidt in Managua and Helen Murphy in Bogota. Editors: Andrew Barden, Brendan Walsh

To contact the reporter on this story: Andres R. Martinez in Tegucigalpa at amartinez28@bloomberg.net; Matthew Walter in Panama City at mwalter4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 2, 2009 18:33 EDT