An airborne drama that held Honduras in suspense for most of the day ended Sunday evening with the ousted president's plane circling over the airport here in the capital, where soldiers and riot police officers blocked the runway and used tear gas and bullets to disperse supporters who had awaited what was supposed to have been his triumphal return. As the plane carrying the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, swept in low and made two passes over the city, cheers erupted from the crowds below. An air force jet then streaked across the sky, and Zelaya's plane flew off to Nicaragua. 'The runway is blocked,' Zelaya said in an interview from the sky that was broadcast over loudspeakers to his supporters on the ground. 'There is no way I can land.' He vowed to make another attempt soon. As all of Honduras stood in suspense, the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, said he was willing to negotiate with the Organization of American States, the group that dismissed Honduras from its ranks on Saturday night for forcibly ousting the president. It remained unclear whether Micheletti's proposal represented a breakthrough, as some Obama administration officials said might be the case. Earlier, the leaders who expelled Zelaya in an early-morning coup on Sunday, June 28, had bluntly declared that the plane carrying the deposed president and other aircraft accompanying it would be denied permission to enter Honduran air space. '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 went ahead with his bold attempt to recover his presidency. He boarded a plane in Washington on Sunday afternoon with the U.N. General Assembly president, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, and a small group of advisers and others. As he flew, large crowds gathered at the airport to greet him. When hundreds of demonstrators tried to gain access to the airport, the soldiers standing in formation at one of the runways began firing. At least one protester was killed and eight people were injured, rescue officials said. Adding to the tensions, 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 Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina as well as Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the OAS, 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, he addressed the military directly on live television, asking soldiers to return their loyalty to him 'in the name of God, in the name of the people, and in the name of justice.' Tensions were high throughout the region. Micheletti said that 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 massing, and U.S. officials in Washington said they lacked any information of Nicaraguan troop movements. Even as they vowed to discuss the matter with the OAS, members of the new government did not back off a bit from their contention that the ouster of Zelaya by the army 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 arrival in the country would cause violence. 'We don't want internal conflicts,' he said. 'We don't want bloodshed and this could be the consequence of his coming back.' Awaiting him upon return, Micheletti said, were 18 arrest warrants for treason, abuse of authority and other charges. The new government said Zelaya had broken the law by pushing ahead, even when the courts ordered him not to, with a referendum on whether to change the country's constitution. Critics feared he intended to extend his rule past January, when he would have been required to step down. But even as Zelaya's flight approached Honduras, a flurry of diplomatic efforts were underway to try to stop the crisis from spinning out of control. In a possible reciprocation of the de facto government's offer to talk, the OAS shifted away from a strategy that prohibited their diplomats from speaking with Micheletti. For the first time, officials indicated that the organization would open direct channels of communication. In a telephone interview, a senior Obama administration official said that the United States, worried about the worsening tensions on the streets of Honduras, was also beginning its own diplomatic efforts, in coordination with the OAS, to get the negotiations with the de facto government moving sooner rather than later. The officials would not give details of their efforts. 'This is an extremely difficult and delicate situation,' the senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, 'and from our point of view, speed is of the essence.' 