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OBAMA'S VISIT TO BRAZIL AIMS TO REPAIR RELATIONS

By Juan Forero and Perry Bacon Jr.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama declared Brazil's charismatic president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva "the most popular politician on Earth." And Lula said he was "a fan” of Obama.

The relationship held the promise of a closer alliance between Washington and Brasilia. But it soon soured, with Lula saying at the end of his term that the United States behaved as an "empire" and that “nothing had changed" under Obama.

Now, Obama and Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff, will try to repair at times strained relations between the two countries as the American president arrives for a two-day state visit before flying to Chile, a close U.S. ally, and El Salvador, where drug-related violence is rising.

"There's positive interest on both sides in starting over," said Julia Sweig, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who recently met with officials in the new government in Brazil. "Now they have to translate that optimism and goodwill to figure out what they can do together that's in both of their interests, and how to mitigate the tensions that will naturally arise."

The trip will be Obama's first to South America as president. Even as the crisis in Japan and unrest in the Middle East dominate Obama's national security briefings, administration officials decided not to cancel the president's trip but instead cast it as a Way to renew relations with a region that is an emerging market for U.S.-made goods.

The trip is in part a kind of box-checking exercise, as the Obama administration wanted to make a major trip to this region of the world in Obama's first term. White House officials said they would use Obama's visit to the three countries, but particularly Brazil, to emphasize economic issues, in a nod to an American electorate concerned about high unemployment.

“This trip fundamentally is about the U.S, recovery, US. exports and the critical relationship that Latin America plays in our economic future and jobs here in the United States,” said Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

Brazil is the most influential country in this region, and American officials, while playing down any tensions with Lula, have expressed optimism about

establishing close ties with Rousseff, Fonte: WASHINGTON POST NEWS SERVICE