Ousted leader flies to capital but is rebuffed

But after his plane swooped in low over the airport and cheers erupted from the crowds below, it veered away.

“The runway’s blocked,’’ he said in an interview from the plane that was broadcast over loudspeakers at the airport. “There’s no way I can land.’’

As his plane left Honduras, an air force jet and helicopter circled above the airport, emphasizing the interim government’s control of the situation and bringing to a close a dramatic episode that had held the country in suspense much of day.

The leaders who expelled Zelaya in an early-morning coup last Sunday had bluntly said that the plane carrying the deposed president and other aircraft accompanying it would be denied permission to land.

“If he pushes it, there will be 10,000 people on the runway to prevent him,’’ said Enrique Ortez, foreign minister of the caretaker government.

But Zelaya, vowing to return home to recover his presidency, boarded a plane in Washington yesterday afternoon with Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, president of the United Nations General Assembly, and a small group of advisers and others.

Crowds of Zelaya’s supporters ringed the airport, demanding that he be allowed to return to the country and the presidency to which he had been elected.

Soldiers stood in formation at one end of the runway and in trenches dug into a hillside, firing into the air and setting off tear gas, while a helicopter hovered overhead.

As hundreds of people tried to break down the fences to enter the airport grounds, soldiers fired into the crowd. A least one person was killed, and two were badly wounded, a medic and emergency services at the airport said, according to Reuters.

Adding to the drama, Zelaya was giving interviews from the air as he approached Central America. “No one can obligate me to turn around,’’ he told Telesur, a Venezuelan network that had reporters on the plane. “The constitution prohibits expelling Hondurans from the country. I am returning with all of my constitutional guarantees.’’

The presidents of Equador, Paraguay, and Argentina, as well as Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, were flying in a separate plane, and they had plans to land only if Zelaya’s plane landed safely.

As Zelaya’s plane neared the airport, Zelaya addressed the military directly on live television, asking soldiers to return their loyalty to them “in the name of God, in the name of the people, and in the name of justice.’’

About 5:25 p.m., his plane swept in low over the airport, and the crowd erupted in cheers. But the plane flew past the airport and circled the capital.

Despite the anticlimax of the airport drama, diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis seemed to move forward.

Earlier in the day, the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, said he was willing to negotiate with the OAS, which had ousted Honduras Saturday night for forcibly deposing the president. It remained unclear whether Micheletti’s proposal represented a breakthrough, as some Obama administration officials said might be the case.

Tensions were high throughout the region. Micheletti said Nicaraguan troops had been observed near the border with Honduras, which he called a provocation. He called on President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua to withdraw the troops and vowed to defend Honduran territory.

But Ortega denied in a radio interview that any troops were massed, and American officials in Washington said they lacked any information on Nicaraguan troop movements.

Even as they vowed to talk, members of the ousted government did not back off from their contention that the army’s ouster of Zelaya was legal and that under no circumstances would he be allowed to complete the final six months of his presidency.

Micheletti said he was concerned that Zelaya’s return would cause violence. “We don’t want bloodshed, and this could be the consequence of him coming back,’’ Micheletti said.

If he returned, Zelaya would face 18 arrest warrants charging treason, abuse of authority, and other charges, Micheletti said. The new government said Zelaya had broken the law by pushing a referendum on whether to change the country’s constitution, even when the courts had ordered him not to. Critics feared that he intended to extend his rule past January, when he would have been required to step down.

In a telephone interview, a senior Obama administration official said that the United States was beginning its own diplomatic efforts, in coordination with the OAS, to get the negotiations with the de facto government moving. The officials would not give details of their efforts.

“This is an extremely difficult and delicate situation,’’ the senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, “and from our point of view, speed is of the essence.’’