CARACAS, Thursday June 25, 2009 | Update
Western Hemisphere
The member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a Latin American integration project which describes itself as "socialist and anti-imperialist," backed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and rejected "foreign interference" in Iran's domestic issues.
In the final declaration of the 6th Summit of ALBA, the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez; Bolivia, Evo Morales; Nicaragua; Daniel Ortega; and Ecuador, Rafael Correa, condemned a "smear campaign against this brotherly country" after the results of the vote held last June 12 were made known and challenged by the opposition, AFP reported.
ALBA leaders "reaffirmed their support to the Islamic Revolution of Iran, to the institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and rejected foreign interference and the smear campaign unleashed against the brotherly country," the text reads.
During the summit, President Chávez -a close ally of Ahmadinejad- said that the US intelligent agency (CIA) was responsible for the protests staged after the elections in Iran.
10:07 AM. DIPLOMACY. Admired by the Colombian guerrilla after his coup attempt in 1992, the then lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez Frías received financial support by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) for his projects after his capture that year. This mostly explains the relationship and "debt" between the parties, as revealed by a paper of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of the United Kingdom.