WRAPUP 5-Zelaya vows return to Honduras despite arrest threat

(For a TAKE A LOOK on Honduras, click on [nN28343997])

* Foreign leaders to accompany Zelaya back to Honduras

* Interim government says Zelaya will be arrested

* Zelaya says only intends to finish current mandate

* Interim government sending mission to Washington (Recasts throughout)

By Patrick Markey and Mica Rosenberg

TEGUCIGALPA, June 30 (Reuters) - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya vowed on Tuesday to return to Honduras flanked by foreign leaders to serve the rest of his term, defying a warning from a hostile interim leadership that he will be immediately arrested.

Zelaya gathered further international support as he addressed the United Nations and Organization of American States. He said the Argentine and Ecuadorean presidents and the U.N. General Assembly and OAS chiefs would accompany him on a trip back to Honduras on Thursday.

Upping the ante in what is already Central America's biggest political crisis in decades, the interim government set up after Sunday's military coup said Zelaya would be captured if he returned.

The coup against Zelaya -- a timber magnate toppled in a dispute over his push to allow presidential re-election beyond a single four-year term -- has been greeted by a tide of condemnation from U.S. President Barack Obama to Zelaya's leftist allies in Latin America. But he remains a divisive figure in Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana-exporter of some 7 million people.

Several thousand demonstrators rallied in favor of his ouster in the capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday, after two days of rowdy anti-Zelaya protests near the presidential palace.

But in a development that could offer an opening for talks on ending the stand-off, the interim government said it would send a delegation of politicians, business leaders and lawyers to Washington on Wednesday for talks on the crisis.

Roberto Micheletti, sworn in as caretaker president by Congress soon after Sunday's coup, announced the mission after Zelaya traveled to New York and Washington to address the United Nations and Organization of American States on Tuesday.

U.S. officials said Zelaya would likely meet State Department officials while in Washington.

Zelaya insisted he will return to complete his mandate, which ends in early 2010, and said he did not intend to run for president again.

"I am going back to Honduras on Thursday, I'm going to return as president," Zelaya said after the U.N. General Assembly urged member states to recognize only his government.