Republican lawmakers said Obama's reaction to President Manuel Zelaya's ouster had placed the US in line with the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

"By calling this a coup and by early statements insisting on the reinstatement of Mr Zelaya, the administration now stands with the likes of (Hugo) Chavez, (Evo) Morales and (Daniel) Ortega, and not with the Honduran people," Republican Connie Mack said during a hearing by a panel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Zelaya, who assumed the presidency in January 2006, raised the ire of lawmakers, judges and his country's military by seeking to rewrite the constitution for a referendum without the required congressional approval.

Currently in the Dominican Republic to drum up support, Zelaya is scheduled to return to Washington for talks with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon and Jose Miguel Insulza, the head of the Organization of American States, according to his embassy in Washington.

"Zelaya was removed from office for his unconstitutional and illegal attempts to alter the constitution of Honduras for purely selfish reasons," said Congressman Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey.

The claim that the events that led to Zelaya's ouster constituted a coup "melts under any serious scrutiny," Smith added.

"Rather, democracy and the rule of law triumphed over Mr Zelaya's lawlessness."

Democrats, meanwhile, backed Obama in calling for Zelaya's return to power. But the legislators were united in criticizing the Honduran leader for creating the polarized atmosphere that led to his forcible removal from office on June 28.

Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, who chairs the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, countered that "our hemisphere cannot tolerate what is essentially a military coup."

Zelaya, he admitted, "needed to listen. He did not," when the Honduran political establishment expressed its concern over the proposed referendum, which was suspected as an attempt by the beleaguered leader to lift the one-term presidential term limit to seek re-election.

But "this is not to say that those who deposed him were angels," Engel said.

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