US president Barack Obama flew to Central America today seeking to boost cooperation on drug enforcement and immigration, challenges that resonate loudly with Washington's neighbors and among US voters.
Shifting to tiny, impoverished El Salvador after visiting economically thriving Brazil and Chile, Mr Obama arrived with his attention split as he faced questions and criticism at home and abroad about the US role in a UN-mandated air assault on Libya's Muammar Gadafy.
There were also signs Mr Obama may cut short his El Salvador trip slightly tomorrow and hasten his return to Washington to deal with the Libya crisis. The White House announced changes in his itinerary that could allow him to leave earlier than his scheduled mid-afternoon departure.
The final leg of Mr Obama's Latin American tour marked a change in focus from issues of trade and investment that dominated his first stops aimed largely at reasserting US interests in a region where China is posing growing competition.
Mr Obama quickly headed to talks with president Mauricio Funes, a moderate leftist the White House sees as a key partner in confronting the spillover of Mexico's drug violence not only in Central America but in southern US border states.
Mr Obama's travels have been increasingly dogged by concern about US goals in the Western military campaign over Libya. He is struggling to balance his handling of world crises with his domestic priorities of job creation and economic recovery, considered crucial to his 2012 re-election chances.
Mr Obama mostly stuck to his travel plans even as aides scrambled to keep him up to speed on Libyan developments and unrest in the Arab world. He phoned British prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy today to discuss a transfer of US control of the air campaign to Nato.
But the White House said a visit planned for tomorrow to San Salvador's cathedral to pay homage at the tomb of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero was shifted to today, and that it was unclear whether he would go ahead with a tour of Mayan ruins outside the city tomorrow afternoon.
The El Salvador visit will wrap up a five-day mission to re-engage with Latin America and forge what Mr Obama has called a "new era of partnership" with a region where many sensed US neglect in recent years.
Mr Obama's choice of El Salvador has been depicted at least in part as a US rebuke to communist Cuba and socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the most strident anti-American voice in the region, to show that Washington is comfortable working with a pragmatic left-leaning government.
Reuters