PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — President Obama, facing criticism at home for appearing too cozy with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, defended his overtures on Sunday, saying the handshakes and polite conversation the two leaders shared here were hardly “endangering the strategic interests of the United States.”
Mr. Obama, wrapping up a four-day swing through Latin America that included a summit meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders here, said he believed he had paved the way for “frank dialogue” with countries like Venezuela and Cuba, countries whose relations with the United States are, respectively, strained and practically nonexistent.
But, speaking at a news conference here, the president also sought to calibrate his message more finely, aware that his gestures to those nations may not sit well back at home. He said he has “great differences” with Mr. Chávez and insisted that freedom for the Cuban people would remain the guiding principle of his foreign policy.
“That’s our lodestone, our North Star,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama came to this lush and mountainous Caribbean island with the aim of forging new relationships in a region that felt ignored by his predecessor, and on that score he clearly succeeded. He tamped down tensions over Cuba by declaring he sought “a new beginning” there. By the summit meeting’s end, Mr. Chávez said he was ready to send an ambassador to the United States.
Yet some old tensions remained. President Evo Morales of Bolivia confronted Mr. Obama during a private session with a charge that the United States is meddling in his country and had plotted to assassinate him. Mr. Obama responded on Sunday, saying, “I am absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments.”
Back in Washington, the seemingly friendly images of the American president and Mr. Chávez, who famously referred to former President George W. Bush as “the devil,” drew criticism from some Republicans Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada who said on CNN that it was “irresponsible for the president” to be seen laughing and joking with “one of the most anti-American leaders in the entire world.”
Mr. Obama’s gestures toward Cuba, which is estimated to be holding more than 200 political prisoners, also left some uneasy. “Release the prisoners and we’ll talk to you,” Senator Lindsay Graham, the South Carolina Republican, said of the Cuban government on Fox News Sunday, adding, “Put up or shut up.”
The White House seemed sensitive to the criticism. David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said on the CBS Program “Face the Nation” that Venezuela must “stop this sort of rampant and tasteless anti-Americanism.” Mr. Obama himself was more polite, the Venezuelan leader’s inflammatory rhetoric has been “a source of concern.”
The president added, “The test for all of us is not simply words but also deeds.”
Those conflicting sentiments underscored the delicate path Mr. Obama is charted for himself at the Summit of the Americas, which brought together 34 leaders from the Western Hemisphere. On the one hand, the president wants to heal old wounds and demonstrate that he is serious about listening to the concerns of other leaders. On the other hand, he does not want to be seen as soft on countries that pose serious human rights concerns.
Thus, while Mr. Obama ran for the Senate in 2004 on a platform of lifting the 47-year old trade embargo with Cuba, he acknowledged he had since changed his mind, saying that 2004 “seems just eons ago.”
Mr. Obama said he did learn some things during his time here. He said he was struck by the way other nations spoke of Cuba’s medical diplomacy; with 12 medical schools, the country turns out well-trained doctors that it sends throughout the region to provide health care in impoverished areas.
“It’s a reminder for us in the United States,” Mr. Obama said, “that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence.”
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