Roberto Micheletti, a former head of Congress chosen as the new president, said that Zelaya "broke laws" and faced prosecution. The country's attorney general, Luis Alberto Rubi, said Tuesday that warrants had been issued accusing Zelaya of 18 crimes, including treason and abuse of authority.
Zelaya traveled to Panama on Wednesday to attend the inauguration of President Ricardo Martinelli.
The dueling claims to power have left Honduran society divided. Demonstrators on both sides have held competing gatherings this week in the nation's capital, Tegucigalpa, and the city of San Pedro Sula, though without any widespread violence.
In Tegucigalpa on Wednesday, about 1,000 pro-Zelaya demonstrators marched along with a caravan of horn-blowing taxis to the OAS offices to celebrate the resolution. An air force helicopter followed the group overhead.
Honduran television reported late Tuesday that a government bomb squad detonated an explosive device that had been hurled at the Supreme Court, which is under the army's control.
Zelaya's backers decry what they describe as thuggish tactics reminiscent of Latin America's troubled past, whereas detractors accuse him as having fallen under the spell of leftists in the region, chiefly Venezuela's firebrand president, Hugo Chavez.
Micheletti has justified the ouster as legal, saying Zelaya violated the law by moving forward with plans for a referendum aimed at changing the constitution to allow his own reelection. The nonbinding vote, scheduled for Sunday but scrapped after Zelaya's arrest, was deemed unlawful by elections officials and met opposition from the army, Congress and Supreme Court.
The showdown has presented Obama with his first real crisis in a region that was pushed into the background during the Bush administration by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. officials reportedly sought in recent days to dissuade the Honduran military from acting but failed to prevent the coup.
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ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
Renderos is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
