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Iran's leader seeks Latin ties
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 15, 2007
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Iran's hard-line president expanded his courtship of allies in his standoff with Washington on Sunday, pledging deeper ties with Nicaragua's leftist leader through the opening of embassies in each other's capitals. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in Managua as part of a series of meetings with Latin America's newly inaugurated leftist leaders. He visited fellow OPEC member Venezuela on Saturday, pledging with President Hugo Chavez to spend $2-billion to finance projects in their countries and in Africa and Latin America to combat the global influence of their common enemy, the United States. Ahmadinejad, president of a fundamentalist Shiite theocracy deeply hostile to Washington, met with Nicaragua's newly inaugurated leftist president, Daniel Ortega, whose first government faced a U.S.-backed guerrilla insurgency during the 1980s. A cooperation agreement that was to be signed Sunday and plans for new embassies strengthen ties between two countries that have had little interaction. Their paths crossed in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States secretly sold arms to Iran to free American hostages, then used some of the proceeds to back Contra rebels who fought Ortega's first, Soviet-backed government. "Our two counties have common interests, enemies and goals," Ahmadinejad said. "We may be far apart, but we are close in heart." Ortega, while pledging close ties with Ahmadinejad, has tried to start his new government on a cordial note with the U.S. government. His measured remarks Sunday contrasted with those of his friend Chavez, who railed against the United States during Ahmadinejad's visit to Venezuela on Saturday. Today, the Iranian leader will attend the inauguration of Ecuador's new president, Rafael Correa, and meet with Bolivian President Evo Morales, both outspoken critics of the Bush administration's policies in Latin America.
[Last modified January 15, 2007, 01:15:57]
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