Israel has demanded a response from Argentina’s foreign minister to allegations that he agreed to abandon the investigation into Iran’s role in the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre, in return for favourable trade links.

Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the Chilean miners for their “strength and faith” during their time trapped below the desert as they came to the end of a week - long trip around Israel.

The Israeli Prime Minister also invited the South Americans back in 13 years' time to mark the “barmitzvah” of one of the miners’ sons, who earlier this week was baptised in the Jordan River.

The Chilean miners have landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport.

Four months after they were rescued from a collapsed mine in the Atacama Desert, 31 of the 33 men , and their partners, have arrived for a tour of Israel.

The visit, organised by Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov just days after the men were saved, has been labelled “the pilgrimage of thanks in the Holy Land”.

Mr Misezhnikov said he offered them the free holiday in tribute to their “bravery and strength of spirit”.

In September 2003 Beni Daniel, Ortaz Ohayon, Ido Yosef Guy and Erez Altawil – four Israelis in their twenties – were kidnapped while trekking near ancient Indian ruins at Ciudad Perdida.

They were taken hostage by members of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN), a leftist rebel organisation which had been waging a war against the government of the south American country since the 1960s.

Three others, kidnapped at the same time, had already escaped. But the Israelis, along with 32-year-old Briton Mark Henderson, were not released for another 102.

Six years after he lead a failed coup against the government of President Carlos Andres Perez, Venezuela chose the anti-globalist revolutionary and former paratrooper Hugo Chavez as its president.

Seen domestically as a champion of the poor, he swept into power on a populist platform vowing to overhaul the South American country’s corrupt politics. The wealthy, the church and much of the media have come under criticism in his 12 years in power.

The Chilean miners who were rescued from deep underneath the Atacama Desert in October have accepted the Israeli government’s offer to spend an “uplifting and extraordinary” Christmas in Israel.

After the 33 men were saved, the Israeli tourism minister, Stas Misezhnikov, invited them on an all expenses paid trip to see the Christian holy sites.

Rather rashly, he extended the invitation to the miners’ partners. “Los 33” have now happily accepted the offer, but have also asked that nearly 70 members of their extended families can come too.

The Venezuelan ambassador to Britain has denied that an event, marking 10 years since the outbreak of the second intifada, glorified terrorism.

However at the event, held on Saturday at the embassy’s Bolivar Hall in London and denounced by anti-extremism campaigners as a “celebration of the murder of Israelis”, speakers expressed support for Palestinian resistance against Israel.

Anti-extremism campaigners have called for police to intervene in an event organised by the Venezuelan Embassy in London marking the 10th anniversary of the start of the second intifada.

The event, to be staged on Saturday at Bolivar Hall in central London, has been titled “The Outbreak of the Intifada: Turning Back the Empire.”

It is described as part of “a series of events which commemorates 10 years since the eruption of the defining struggle of our generation.

“It is also a salute to that struggle…against the Zionist-apartheid state.”

The Chilean president has apologised for writing a phrase associated with the Nazis in a message to the German government while on a state visit.

President Sebastian Pinera wrote in the government’s guest book the slogan “Deutschland uber alles" which translates as “Germany above all.”

The phrase was used by Nazi politicians during the Third Reich and after the Second World War was removed from the German national anthem because of its connotations.