TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Baton-wielding soldiers used tear gas and water cannons to chase away thousands who demonstrated outside the Brazilian Embassy, leaving deposed President Manuel Zelaya and 70 friends and family trapped inside without water, electricity or phones.
"We know we are in danger," Zelaya said during interviews with various media outlets on Tuesday. "We are ready to risk everything, to sacrifice."
Heavily armed soldiers stood guard on neighboring rooftops and helicopters buzzed overhead.
Zelaya, forced out of his country at gunpoint, triumphantly popped up in the capital on Monday, telling captivated supporters that after three months of international exile and a secretive 15-hour cross country journey, he was ready to lead again.
Interim President Roberto Micheletti's response was terse: Initially he said Zelaya was lying about being there, and then - after Zelaya appeared on national television - Micheletti pressed Brazil to hand Zelaya over so he could be arrested under a warrant issued by the Supreme Court charging treason and abuse of authority.
Some officials suggested even the embassy would be no haven.
"The inviolability of a diplomatic mission does not imply the protection of delinquents or fugitives from justice," said Micheletti's foreign ministry adviser, Mario Fortinthe.
Police and soldiers set up a ring of security in a 3-mile perimeter around the embassy and could be seen detaining people in some areas. The government said in a broadcast statement that security forces "have orders to detain those people getting together in neighborhoods with the purpose of causing uneasiness to the rest of the population."
The statement denied local media reports that three people were killed outside the embassy.
Security Ministry spokesman Orlin Cerrato told The Associated Press that two policemen had been beaten and 174 people were being held on charges of disorderly conduct and vandalism.
A doctor interviewed by Radio Globo reported that 18 people had been treated at the public hospital for injuries.
A 26-hour curfew imposed Monday afternoon closed businesses and schools, leaving the capital's streets nearly deserted. All the nation's international airports and border posts were closed and roadblocks set up to keep Zelaya supporters from massing for protests.
On Tuesday evening, the government announced the curfew was being extended 12 more hours, until 6 a.m. today.
Micheletti repeated his insistence that there had never been a coup - just a "constitutional succession" orderedby the courts and approved by Congress.
"Coups do not allow freedom of assembly," he wrote in a column published Tuesday in The Washington Post. "They do not guarantee freedom of the press, much less a respect for human rights. In Honduras, these freedoms remain intact and vibrant."
Zelaya loyalists ignored the curfew Monday night and surrounded the embassy dancing and cheering. But troops moved in early Tuesday and cleared them from the streets with clubs, tear gas, jets of water and deafening music.
Some tear gas canisters fell inside the compound, where Zelaya, his wife, some of their children, Cabinet members and journalists held hushed conversations, napped on couches and curled up on the floor beneath travel posters of Brazilian beaches.
Prosecutor spokesman Melvin Duarte said about 85 people voluntarily left the embassy and no charges would be lodged against any of them.
"They are people who took refuge at the embassy when protesters were cleared from the area this morning," he said.
Zelaya said he had no plans to leave and he repeatedly asked to speak with Micheletti.
Those negotiations have yet to begin, and with his embassy the current hot spot for the Honduran crisis, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called Zelaya and pressed him not to do anything that might provoke an invasion of the diplomatic mission.
Silva's government on Tuesday asked the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the situation in Honduras, the official Agencia Brasil news agency said. Brazil's U.N. ambassador, Maria Luiza Viotti, urged the council to guarantee the safety of the embassy and Zelaya.
Brazil Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Micheletti's government sent an "impertinent and inadequate" note Monday to the embassy announcing it would seal off the compound.
Embassy staff were told to stay home and most did, while embassy Charge d'Affaires Francisco Catunda Resende said water, phone and electricity services had been cut, leaving the mission with a dieselpowered generator, according to a spokesman with Brazil's Foreign Ministry who did not give his name in keeping with policy.
A senior U.S. official said that Brazil has asked for U.S. assistance in restoring power and water to the embassy, and in acquiring generators, fuel and water. He said that the United States was looking for ways to help but did not say what it was doing. The official asked for anonymity, becausehe was not authorized to speak on the record on the issue.
Zelaya was removed in June after he repeatedly ignored court orders to drop plans for a referendum on reforming the constitution. His opponents feared he wanted to end a constitutional ban on re-election - a charge Zelaya denied.
The Supreme Court ordered his arrest, and the Honduran Congress, alarmed by his increasingly close alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuba, backed the army as it forced him into exile in Costa Rica.
For the past three months Zelaya has traveled around the region to lobby for supportfrom political leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Information for this article was contributed from Tegucigalpa by Freddy Cuevas and Mark Stevenson, from New York by Michael Astor, from Washington by Desmond Butler and from Brasilia, Brazil, by Marco Sibaja of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 09/23/2009