In addition to growing relationships with Venezuela and Bolivia, Iran continues to find friendly new partners in South America. Last Saturday, Iranian officials agreed to offer technical support and training to Ecuador to help develop its oil industry. "An agreement was signed between Iran and Ecuador on cooperation in the oil industry and showed the will of the two countries' presidents to increase cooperation in economy and politics," Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said.

And, working on other Western Hemisphere friendships, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent congratulatory messages to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom for the celebration of National Day in each country. In the note to Ortega, Ahmadinejad said the ties between the revolutionary countries have grown stronger.

Ahmadinejad also vowed Friday to keep supporting Hamas until the "collapse of Israel." An Iranian news agency quoted him as saying he would stand behind the Palestinian people "until the big victory feast which is the collapse of the Zionist regime."

For the first time the Bush administration publicly linked the Venezuelan government to the Columbian guerrilla group FARC. The U.S. Treasury Department said that three top Venezuelan officials helped FARC get weapons to overthrow the Columbian government. The news came as Chavez threw the U.S. ambassador out of Caracas. "He has 72 hours, from this moment, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas, to leave Venezuela," Chavez told a cheering crowd, "When there's a new government in the United States, we'll send an ambassador. A government that respects Latin America."

In a sign of solidarity Bolivian President Evo Morales also expelled the U.S. ambassador in La Paz. "Without fear of anyone, without fear of the empire, today before you, before the Bolivian people, I declare the ambassador of the United States persona non grata," Morales said Wednesday on TV.

The U.S. asked the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington to leave the next day.