Free Republic

Tehran, May 3, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will pay official visits to three Latin American countries at the end of this week. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an interview with TV channel 2 said the president is scheduled to visit Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Mottaki said President Ahmadinejad's visit to Brasilia would be a new chapter of mutual ties after 17 years, which began by last year visit of Brazilian FM to Tehran and his Iranian counterpart reciprocal visit late March, 2009. He added that President's visit to Brazil, considering potentials of both countries and ties upon mutual respect...

U.S. President Barack Obama won praise on Saturday for reaching out to the Americas at a regional summit but Latin American and Caribbean leaders pressured him to end the long-standing U.S. embargo on Cuba. Obama, attending his first Summit of the Americas, has promised an era of better cooperation with the hemisphere and offered a new start to communist-ruled Cuba. He won early approval from left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The warm reception for Obama from countries from Brazil to Venezuela contrasted with the last Americas Summit four years ago in Argentina, where leftists like Chavez attacked the "imperialist" policies...

BOGOTA, Columbia (AP) -- An hour-long video police found in a computer of an alleged rebel appears to dispel any doubts that Colombia's largest rebel army gave money to the 2006 election campaign of President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The video shows the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia reading the deathbed manifesto of founding leader Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda. The manifesto clearly acknowledges FARC contributions to Correa's campaign, but it's still possible that Correa wasn't aware of them. The video, given to The Associated Press by a government official on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivity,...

VIOLENCE IN PROTESTS SUPPORTING A CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY Deputies evacuate the Congress amid insults and gas The police pushed back hundreds of protestors from the zone bordering the National Congress Tuesday January 30th, after confrontations occurred between the police and protesters who demanded the restoration of a Constituent Assembly. A contingent of police with anti-disturbance armored vehicles and material pushed back the protestors who surrounded the building and broke up violent groups. The Congress had begun its session to debate the documentation remitted by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on the calling of the popular consultation for the Constituent Assembly, which...

Ecuador aligns itself with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba In speeches against imperialism and neoliberalism, the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia, Evo Morales, and the Ecuadoran President-Elect Rafael Correa, who should assume the government of his country Monday, expressed common ideological and political agreement Sunday. Chavez, Morales, and Correa, who also exalt the figure of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, met together in Zumbahua, an indigenous [Ecuadoran] locality 90 kilometers south of Quito, for a symbolic inauguration of Correa before the indigenous peoples [of Ecuador]. In a speech before a multitude congregated in the central plaza, Correa emphasized that "[Latin]...