Caracas  - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he hopes the next government of the United States "respects" the sovereignty of the peoples of the Americas and brings about "true change" in the White House.

"The only thing we aspire to in a new government in the United States is that it respects the dignity of the peoples of our Americas and respects the sovereignty of our peoples, of our governments," Chavez said at a Venezuelan oil field in the Orinoco Basin.

Washington  - US President George W Bush on Friday applauded John McCain's "exciting decision" of picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, and described her as "a working mother with a track record of getting things done."

Tripoli  - Son of Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi said that the Libyan government had only claimed responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in order to normalize ties with the West and get international sanctions lifted.

"Yes, we wrote a letter to the Security Council saying we are responsible for the acts of our employees... but it doesn't mean that we did it in fact," Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Washington  - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as running mate was dismissed Friday by Democrat rival Barack Obama's campaign as "more of the same."

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Denver, Colorado  - Democratic activists who were disappointed over Senator Hillary Clinton's loss of her party's nomination called Republican John McCain's vice presidential choice strategically "brilliant."

McCain named as his running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - a young woman unionist and mother of five who has a son heading to Iraq with the US army.

"It's a brilliant, spectacular move," Mary Boergers, a Maryland state senator and unhappy Democratic delegate for Clinton told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Tbilisi/Moscow  - Georgia declared Friday that it was breaking off all diplomatic ties with Russia over the Kremlin's recognition of its breakaway regions.

It also and outlawed Russia's local peacekeeping mission. Russia criticized the deterioration in relations.

The move was part of a parliamentary resolution voted Thursday, which included an official termination of Russia's former peacekeeping mission in Georgia.