Nicaragua ? Ousted President Manuel Zelaya encamped his roving government in exile in Ocotal, a sleepy mountain town near the Honduran border Sunday to launch his return to power after a coup last month.

After weeks of shuttling between Central America and Washington, Zelaya said he has no plans to leave the border region, despite a U.S. State Department spokesman saying he would arrive Tuesday in Washington to restart negotiations with the interim government that deposed him.

“If someone wants to talk to me, let them come here to Ocotal,” Zelaya said.

He drew throngs of supporters and locals curious about the celebrity who has brought world attention and international media to a town of 35,000 just 15 miles from the Honduran border.

His presence threatened to divide Nicaraguans as well. This town of two traffic lights suffered heavily during the 1980s Contra war, when U.S.-backed rebels attacked the Sandinista government.

Nicaragua’s opposition Liberal Constitutionalist Party issued a statement Sunday calling Zelaya’s actions “a threat to the peace, tranquility and friendship” between the two countries.

Leftist President Daniel Ortega’s ruling Sandinista party has championed Zelaya’s cause.

The deposed president maintained his two-front campaign to pressure his country’s interim government through civil disobedience, while urging the international community to slap tougher sanctions on coup leaders, who have been criticized worldwide for using the military to whisk a democratically elected leader out of the country on June 28.