Diplomatic Challenges Face Rice on Her First Latin American Tour

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday began her first official trip to Latin America, a region that is suddenly posing challenges to American diplomacy.

On the eve of her arrival here for meetings with Brazilian officials, Rice praised South America’s “remarkable” progress away from dictatorships, saying it was in some ways leading the trend toward democratic reform that the Bush administration was trying to promote around the world.

Yet in recent months, U.S. officials have found themselves facing an escalating confrontation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and have discovered that neighboring countries are largely unwilling to join efforts to isolate him.

U.S. differences with Latin American leaders were also visible this month when representatives to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States refused, in a series of votes, to install the Washington-backed candidate to head the group.

And the recent rise of new governments in Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador that are left-leaning or less pro-U.S. than their predecessors suggests there is more resistance ahead to Washington’s efforts to spread free-market policies.

The most serious rift is with Chavez, who last weekend broke off a 35-year-old military exchange program with the United States and expelled four U.S. military instructors he accused of trying to stir up unrest.

U.S. officials accuse Chavez, a former army colonel who is close to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of undermining democratic institutions by imposing restrictions on the media and manipulating the judiciary. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently complained that Chavez was planning unnecessarily large arms purchases, and some Pentagon officials speculated that the weapons might be destined for insurgents in Colombia and other countries.

But Chavez says his populist policies are intended to improve the lives of millions of poor Venezuelans who have not benefited from the country’s oil wealth. His government has defended the arms purchases as necessary to outfit the nation’s armed forces.

U.S. officials believe the best way to deal with Chavez is the way they are trying to get North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear ambitions -- by working with neighbors to apply collective pressure.

But neighbors, including the United States’ close ally Colombia, are unwilling to press Chavez too hard because doing so might increase instability along expansive borders. Neighboring states also fear that siding with the U.S. against Chavez might alienate leftist groups at home.

After Rumsfeld’s contention about the weapons purchases, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva complained of “defamation and insinuations” targeting a friend. And on Tuesday, after meeting with Rice, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim spoke of the need for “always respecting Venezuelan sovereignty.”

“South America favors dialogue and engagement,” said Daniel P. Erikson, a Latin America specialist at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

U.S. officials have been reviewing their options in regard to Chavez. But in the absence of strong support from Venezuela’s neighbors, the U.S. has been taking a soft line. The Bush administration has said in recent days that building opposition to Chavez is not a primary goal of Rice’s trip.

Rice was mild in comments to reporters en route to Brasilia, the capital, from Texas on Monday evening.

“This is not an issue of whether the United States wishes to have good relations with Venezuela,” Rice said. “We want to have good relations with Venezuela.”

But she added: “We’ve had concerns about the Venezuelan regime in terms of its own democratic development” and the threat it may pose to its neighbors.

In other comments on the plane, Rice signaled she wanted to end the monthlong standoff over the OAS leadership by turning to a new candidate.

“We do need to look for a solution now,” she said. “We need to look for a way that we can get a secretary-general who will have the full support of the members of the OAS, where there will not be a sense of division.”

In addition to Brazil, Rice will visit Colombia, Chile and El Salvador.

Brazil elected the left-wing Lula in 2002. Since then, discontent among the poor has led to the installation of leftist governments in other countries such as Bolivia and Argentina.

Protests in Ecuador just ousted President Lucio Gutierrez, who had been criticized for cutting subsidies for the poor to meet international lenders’ requirements.

Though changes in these governments show the evolution of South America’s popular sentiment, Erikson said they should not be cause for undue alarm in Washington.

Most of the new leaders remain “orthodox in economic terms and moderate in foreign policy,” he said.

Rice characterized the upheavals as being the kind of problems that normally buffet fragile democracies.

“I would not call this a trend,” she said.