CARACAS, Monday June 29, 2009 | Update
Western Hemisphere
The Latin American countries of the left-leaning Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a regional integration initiative, said on Monday that they will withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras, in protest at the ouster of constitutional President Manuel Zelaya.
"ALBA's member countries have decided to withdraw our ambassadors and reduce to a minimum our diplomatic staff in Tegucigalpa until the legitimate government of President Manuel Zelaya be fully restored in his post," the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Fander Falconi, said while reading the conclusions of the ALBA meeting.
The meeting was attended by Venezuela's President, Hugo Chávez; Nicaragua's President, Daniel Ortega; Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa, and Bolivia's Evo Morales, in addition to ousted Honduran President Zelaya, Reuters reported.
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."