Our correspondent Pascale Harter says the apology has done little to ease the tense relations between the two countries.

Mr Maduro said the US apology was not enough.

"We were detained during an hour and a half, threatened by police with being beaten," he told reporters at Venezuela's mission to the UN. "We hold the US government responsible."

US authorities initially denied Mr Maduro had been detained and his documents seized, saying he had simply been asked to go through a second security screening.

The US state department later confirmed the incident had taken place and apologised.

"The state department can confirm there was an incident with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro at JFK airport in New York," a spokesman said.

"The state department regrets this incident. The United States government apologised to Foreign Minister Maduro and the Venezuelan government."

Coup questions

President Chavez earlier said Mr Maduro had been questioned about his alleged role in a failed Venezuelan coup attempt in 1992, led by Mr Chavez.

US officials said airport security had questioned him, and diplomatic security was then sent to resolve the issue.

This latest episode shows that even small difficulties between the two governments are likely to trigger full-blown diplomatic rows, says the BBC's Greg Morsbach in Caracas.

Mr. Morales says the bases are needed because the United States is "scheming" against Bolivia through neighboring countries, but domestic critics think he is more interested in having the troops available to stem unrest in a region that increasingly is demanding autonomy.

Speaking to journalists before he left for the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cuba last week, Mr. Morales announced that the Venezuelan military would "support" the building of the bases, which the Paraguayan government has denounced as a "provocation."

"Every country has the right to strengthen its defenses," said Mr. Morales, who claimed he was responding to a "campaign by the government of the United States which wants to confront us."

He suggested the situation was similar to the Chaco War in the 1930s in which "external transnational interests confronted [Bolivia and Paraguay] over the region that currently possesses our largest reserves of natural gas."

Political opponents say Mr. Morales is using Venezuelan aid to militarize eastern Bolivia, which is the stronghold of opposition parties that have pushed through a referendum endorsing regional autonomy.

Military delegations from Bolivia and Venezuela met yesterday to establish "economic cooperation" for new army installations in Bolivia's Amazonic region along the Paraguay River said Defense Minister Walker San Miguel. He said the project will cost $22 million.

"It will be a large headquarters for elite units and professional military training which is very much wanted by the Bolivian army and now thanks to Venezuelan cooperation will become a reality," Mr. San Miguel said. The facilities are expected to house an airfield and 2,500 personnel.

Officers of Bolivia's 8th Army Division based in Santa Cruz say Venezuelan army engineers are already at the sites and that Venezuela is bringing in AK-103 assault rifles recently acquired from Russia. Military officials said 14 Venezuelan air force pilots are in Bolivia.

* Both security agencies, Chavez Frias muses, sometimes contaminate Venezuelan police officers.

"We broke an agreement with the DEA, because the DEA was engaged in political espionage ... we are discussing another agreement, but with better conditions for Venezuela."

The President insists that three times more drugs have been seized in Venezuela and big narco fish have been arrested, after breaking off the DEA agreement.

According to the Venezuelan President, the US government has failed in everything it has undertaken, especially the war on drugs and terrorism.

If George Bush had any dignity, Chavez Frias challenges, he would resign because he has been a complete failure ... Venezuela, on the contrary, is conquering ... "we are advancing in project with great success."

Chavez Frias has criticized the US dollar monetary system, arguing that the world is aflood with dollars that are not worth a cent. "It's not good to have dollars right down ... I wouldn't recommend anybody to have dollars."

Instead, the President proposes a new Latin American currency called the Sucre.

Chavez also said that Noam Chomsky may soon visit Venezuela after he endorsed the Masschusetts-based linguist's book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," in his U.N. address Wednesday.

"He is a man that loves the truth about the empire in his country. He is an anti-imperialist, a leftist. Noam Chomsky - I think he will come here," Chavez said.

On Wednesday at the U.N., Chavez held up Chomsky's book and urged Americans to read it "instead of watching Superman movies," saying it would teach them the truth about the abuses of the U.S. government.

Minutes later, he referred to Bush, who had spoken at the U.N. the previous day, saying the "devil" had left the odor of sulfur lingering in the chamber. Chavez then made the sign of the cross and brought his hands together as if in prayer.

Continuing in the same vein Saturday, Chavez said that he had had to wash Chomsky's book after placing it on the podium where Bush had stood.

"I had to clean it afterward because it smelled like sulfur. I had to sprinkle it with holy water," he said as the audience laughed.

Chavez told a news conference following his U.N. address that he believed Chomsky had died, and said he was sorry he didn't get a chance to meet him. However, Chomsky, 77, is alive and is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chavez did not refer to his earlier blunder but noted that the publicity he brought to Chomsky's book has boosted its sales.

"Now it's among the world's best-sellers. It's sold out," he said.

Following Chavez's speech, the book jumped on Thursday into the top 10 on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, while Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, has ordered an additional paperback printing of 25,000 copies.

Chavez's incendiary remarks against Bush are not new. He has previously called his long-time foe a "devil," "donkey" and "madman" as ties between the two countries have deteriorated since 2002, when the Bush administration swiftly recognized leaders who briefly ousted Chavez in a coup, before Chavez returned to power amid street protests.

But this week's aggressive verbal attacks made on American soil have elicited a sharp backlash.

Bush's political foes and friends alike have condemned the remarks, newspapers have sharply criticized the Venezuelan leader, while a call has emerged for businesses to boycott Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. One U.S. governor said his state is no longer interested in buying discounted heating oil from Venezuela this winter.

Venezuela is competing against U.S.-backed Guatemala for a seat on the U.N. Security Council and is tied to the United States as its No. 1 buyer of oil.

The new spat between Caracas and Washington has capped an incendiary week which saw the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez describe President George Bush as "the devil" from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly, before telling passers-by in a Harlem street that the US leader was "a sick man" and "an alcoholic".

According to the Foreign Minister, the airport authorities at one point ordered him and other members of his delegation to spread their arms and legs and be frisked, but they flatly refused. "They tried to put on some handcuffs," he said, but "they would have had to take us out of that airport dead if they tried to touch us."

Predictably, the American version of events was somewhat different. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees airport security screening in the US, denied that Mr Maduro had been mistreated.

The Foreign Minister, said the spokesman, had been picked out for "secondary screening" - an additional security procedure but did not say why. Mr Maduro "began to articulate his frustration ... right after he went through the magnetometer [the walk-through metal detector]," and police "confronted him when the situation became a ruckus". The delay caused Mr Maduro to miss his flight. Instead, he went back to the Venezuelan mission to the UN, and called a press conference.

Mr Maduro said that the Venezuelan government had complained to Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, and consulted lawyers. The detention was a "flagrant violation of international law" and Mr Maduro's diplomatic immunity. It had been "a deliberate attempt to provoke us". Mr Chavez told Venezuelan television that the Foreign Minister was held because the US authorities had linked him with a failed coup in 1992, led by the future president.

The Maduro affair leaves relations with Washington at their worst since 2002, when the US instantly recognised the organisers of the coup that briefly toppled Mr Chavez, before massive street protests swept him back to power.