The leaders of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela formally ended their dispute March 7 with handshakes and embraces at the 20th Rio Group Summit in the Dominican Republic, approving a "Santo Domingo Declaration," which condemns Colombia's March 1 cross-border raid in Ecuador but emphasizes the need for regional cooperation in combating illegal armed groups. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the raid and pledged to refrain from further such incursions, in exchange for commitments on cooperation. The Rio Group, established in 1986, is a regional bloc aimed at promoting political and economic cooperation.

In its 2007 Annual Report, released March 5, the International Narcotics Control Board called on the governments of Bolivia and Peru to ban coca chewing, as well as its sale or export. The indigenous people of the Andes have chewed coca for thousands of years, and the call is likely to fall on deaf ears in the Andes.

Iran plans to open a television station "for all of Latin America," to be based in the coca-growing Chaparé region of Bolivia, President Evo Morales announced at a gathering of cocaleros after his re-election as president of Bolivia's coca-growers union. The station would be "for all of Bolivia, for all of Latin America, recognizing the great struggle of this peasant movement," Morales told the gathering in Cochabamba. (AP, Feb. 19)

Bolivia's National Electoral Court (CNE) issued a ruling March 7 postponing a referendum on the new draft constitution scheduled for May 4, saying there is not enough time to ensure "legal guarantees" and an "adequate electoral environment." CNE president José Luis Exeni said: "No technical, operative, legal or political conditions exist to allow it to go forward." He added that the schedule failed to meet a constitutional requirement that referendums be held at least 90 days after being approved by the congress. It is unclear if the decision will also apply to the referendums on regional autonomy called without congressional approval by Bolivia's eastern departments. (BBC, AP, March 8)

Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer accused by both the UN and Amnesty International of flouting embargos, was arrested at a five-star hotel in central Bangkok March 6. Thai authorities issued the warrant based on information from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). A former KGB officer, Bout allegedly sold arms to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Colombia's FARC rebels and warring sides in several African conflicts. Russia and the US are both seeking his extradition.

Ecuadoran authorities are trying to detemrine if five students and professors from Mexico "carrying out investigations in the zone" were killed in Colombia's March 1 air-strike on a FARC guerilla camp in the Ecuadoran Amazon. At least one Mexican student apparently wounded in the attack has asserted that five of their comrades were killed, according to Ecuador's Security Minister Gustavo Larrea. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it is "working with Ecuador and Colombia to corroborate reports of two Mexicans who possibly died in the incident."

Some 40,000 people took part in a Bogotá march for victims of Colombia's paramilitary and armed forces. Organized by the State Crimes Victims Movement (MOVICE), the march was a direct response to last month's mobilization against the FARC guerillas. The Bogotá march was joined by a three-day cross-country procession, mostly by campesinos, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians from the war-torn departments of Chocó and Cauca, which swelled along the way with marchers from Colombia's central departments of Tolima, Huila and Cundinamarca. The BBC reported that "hundreds of thousands" marched in local mobilizations in cities and towns across the country.

In a disconcerting Feb. 29 clip from Cuba's Prensa Latina, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez suggests that CIA-backed "anarchists" could be behind recent campus violence and bomb attacks in the country:

The conservative attack on the regional elections slated for November in Venezuela and emerging anarchism caused President Hugo Chavez to call for revolutionary discipline.