Obama's LatAM tour - Anti-US protests erupt

Brazil: President Barack Obamam arrived in Chile yesterday to lay out his vision for deeper ties with Latin America on a trip overshadowed by US military air strikes to contain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama is expected to hail Chile's transition from military rule to stable democracy as a model for Libya and other countries in the Arab world, which is being swept by popular rebellions against autocratic rule.

Obama plans a joint press conference with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera that will provide an opportunity for him to further explain why he ordered the US military to join UN-sanctioned international action against Gaddafi.

Republican critics of Democrat Obama demand he clarify the mission's goal. They say he has done a poor job of convincing Americans troubled the United States is undertaking military action in a third Arab country on top of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The strikes are sanctioned under a United Nations resolution to protect Libyan civilians by all necessary means from Gaddafi loyalists trying to suppress a popular uprising against his rule. Obama, in a brief statement to reporters Saturday in Brasilia as his five-day Latin American tour got underway, said he had ordered limited US military action to support an international coalition to shield Libyan civilians from harm.

The President is juggling the US involvement in Libya with the deadly nuclear crisis in Japan, while at the same time seeking to promote deeper ties in a fast-growing Latin America he sees as a fertile region for US job-boosting exports. Latin America was optimistic when Obama took office in 2009 he would give the region the respect it feels it deserves due to its strong economic performance. But two years later there is a sense that relations have been neglected while Obama battles urgent domestic challenges and foreign wars. Rio De Janeiro, Reuters