US President Barack Obama was given a red-carpet welcome to Brazil yesterday beginning a five-day Latin American trip as UN-backed military strikes against Libya seemed imminent.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff greeted Obama, who received full honours including a 21-gun salute when he and First Lady Michelle Obama entered the Planalto Palace in the Brazilian capital.
Obama has US jobs on his agenda during the three-country trip that includes stops in Chile and El Salvador.
“Latin America is a part of the world where the economy is growing very quickly,” the president said in his weekly radio address broadcast just minutes before his arrival.
“I want to open more markets around the world so that American companies can do more business and hire more of our people,” he said.
Before the meeting in the presidential palace, Obama and Rousseff signed an agreement to reduce trade barriers and facilitate investment between the two countries.
Obama’s trip also was designed to re-engage in a part of the world that some say was overlooked by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
But world events including the Libyan rebellion and the nuclear disaster in Japan may overshadow Obama’s trip.
The UN Security Council last Thursday approved military action to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, to protect civilians from strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.
Obama is accompanied on the trip by his wife, their daughters Sasha and Malia, the president’s mother-in-law Marian Robinson, and Eleanor Kaye Wilson, the girls’ godmother.
In Brazil, he plans to highlight an amazing economic leap which has lifted millions from poverty and won a new global influence that Rousseff seems keen to wield.
The trade agreement signed yesterday highlights the “desirability of reducing non-tariff barriers and trade distorting subsidies” Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said. A bilateral commission will hammer out the details.
In Chile, Obama will cite that country’s evolution from authoritarian misery to increasingly prosperous democracy as an example for Middle Eastern nations emerging from repression.
And in El Salvador, Obama hopes to show that Washington’s engagement can squeeze political oxygen from regional foes like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Analysts and officials said Obama’s journey would be the signature trip within the Western Hemisphere of his first term.
Washington also sees the visits as a chance to reassert US weight in a region attracting global interest, and investment dollars, from as far away as China.
“We’ve always had a special bond with our neighbours to the south,” the president said in his address. “It’s a bond born of shared history and values, and strengthened by the millions of Americans who proudly trace their roots to Latin America.”
He will also seek a personal connection with Brazil’s new president, Rousseff, who took office at the start of the year, following tense ties with her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The leaders will hold a press conference and Obama will meet business leaders in Brasilia before heading off to savour Rio de Janeiro’s tourist spots today.
In Chile tomorrow, Obama will seek to honour a rising nation’s embrace of democracy after a difficult transition that aides said may carry lessons for turmoil-wracked nations like Egypt.
He will have talks with President Sebastian Pinera and deliver a speech to the region.
On his final stop in El Salvador, Obama will imply that even leftist leaders like President Mauricio Funes can cooperate with the US, in a signal to US foes like Chavez.
He pointed to the “rapid growth of Latin America, and their openness to American business”.