Chilly Reception Awaits Obama at Summit

Odds are, summit will be full of awkward moments
By Katherine Thompson,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 15, 2009 9:35 AM CDT
Chilly Reception Awaits Obama at Summit
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has long espoused his beefs with the United States, and recently proclaimed that Beijing has replaced Washington as the new center of the world.   (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

President Obama got a warm welcome on his recent Europe trip, but he shouldn't expect the same from Latin America, the Washington Post reports. At the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the new president is likely to face some tough questions, and potentially awkward moments, as he meets leaders from a region battered by the economic crisis.

"Latin Americans, who are experts in crisis after creating many of their own, will say 'We didn't create this one,'" warned the OAS secretary-general. They're ready to turn their ire toward the people Brazil's president recently called the "white, blue-eyed bankers" who, he charged, caused the current mess. But expect the proceedings to be mostly civil: "On many items on the global agenda, we will agree," said the former president of Chile. (More Latin America stories.)

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