The U.S. State Department announced Friday it has informed Venezuela's ambassador to Washington that "he will be expelled". The step comes in retaliation for the expulsion of the US envoy to Caracas.

The move was announced after the U.S. Treasury said Friday it was freezing any U.S. assets of two senior Venezuelan officials and a former official after accusing them of aiding Colombian rebels involved in drug trafficking.

"We have informed the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States that he will be expelled and that he should leave the United States," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday expelled the U.S. envoy to Caracas and threatened to halt crude exports to the United States in case his government is attacked, in an act of solidarity with his country's ally Bolivia.

"Starting at this moment the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela," Chavez said at a public event in the port city of Puerto Cabello, 120 kilometers west of Caracas.

Also Thursday Chavez announced that his government had uncovered a coup plot hatched by active and retired military officers, which he said had tacit U.S. approval.

Chavez made it clear that his decision was "in solidarity" with the leftist government of President Evo Morales in Bolivia, which on Wednesday ordered the U.S. ambassador to La Paz to leave. Washington late Thursday expelled Bolivia's ambassador to the United States.

Chavez is the most radical of a growing number of leftist governments in Latin America that to a greater or lesser degree oppose Washington's traditional dominance in Latin America.

Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East and despite Chavez's clashes with the Bush administration, is a major supplier to the United States, which is its biggest customer.

Russia said Monday it was dispatching a nuclear cruiser and other warships and planes to the Caribbean for the joint exercises with Venezuela, the first such maneuvers in the US vicinity since the Cold War.