Honduras: Coup plotters ’hire Israeli mercenaries’

President Manuel Zelaya at Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has accused the coup regime of hiring Israeli mercenaries to flush him out of the Brazilian embassy with ultrasonic weapons.

Mr Zelaya said on Thursday he feared they may enter the building and assassinate him.

"They are threatening to kill us," he said, adding that he has begun to suffer from throat pains resulting from poisonous gases being leaked into the embassy in Tegucigalpa.

Witnesses have confirmed that soldiers installed some kind of device in front of the embassy on Thursday that emitted high-pitched sound.

Mr Zelaya has been threatened with arrest by coup chief Roberto Micheletti if he leaves the embassy, where he, his family and dozens of supporters have been surviving on biscuits.

He returned to his country on Monday after a three-month enforced exile.

On Wednesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the "immediate" reinstatement of his Honduran counterpart at the UN general assembly.

"The international community demands that Zelaya reassumes power in his country at once and should be on the alert with regard to the inviolability of the Brazilian diplomatic mission in the Honduran capital," Mr Lula declared.

Honduras’s de facto foreign ministry accused Brazil of "interfering" in the country’s internal affairs and of having turned its embassy into a "mediatic subversion centre."

Initial talks between Honduras’s constitutional premier and the forces that booted him out of power reportedly hit a brick wall as of Friday afternoon.

Mr Zelaya said that a representative of Mr Micheletti had taken "an extremely hard" stand and he warned that the coup regime’s positions were "totally outside of any possibility of agreement."

While Mr Zelaya said that he must be restored as president for the remainder of his term - which ends in January - he has now agreed to respect the results of the November 29 elections.

Mr Micheletti has reportedly offered to step down, but he refuses to countenance the reinstatement of Mr Zelaya.

• The UN security council began discussions on the political crisis in Honduras on Friday.

Argentinian Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said that the council had discussed the situation of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he said that the embassy and others - like our own - are suffering attacks with ultrasound and other annoyances.

Mr Taiana said that he hoped the meeting would be positive so that the ’de facto’ military rule understands that it must respect the Vienna convention on diplomatic representations."