Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras deposed by a military coup three weeks ago, made a second attempt to return home on Friday, according to Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s leader.

“Zelaya said that in the coming hours he’ll enter Honduras. We’re behind him, we have to support him,” Mr Chávez said in Bolivia on Friday. There has been no confirmation from Mr Zelaya, who is in Nicaragua. In recent days Venezuela’s president, who had already assumed a leading role in condemning the coup, has ramped up his rhetoric against the de facto government in Honduras, accusing it of being backed by the US government.