Barack Obama, Mauricio Macri work to break from past US-Argentina tensions

Obama help up Argentina as an emerging world leaders worthy of US support

On a fence-mending mission, President Barack Obama has held up Argentina as an emerging world leader worthy of US support, as he and Argentine President Mauricio Macri broke with years of recent tensions between their countries.

Obama's state visit to Buenos Aires quickly turned into a love-fest between him and Macri, who in December replaced hot-blooded former President Cristina Fernandez, long a thorn in Obama's side.

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Obama lavished praise on Macri yesterday and said his visit was "so personally important," even riffing on his boyhood interest in Argentinian literature and culture.

"President Macri is a man in a hurry," Obama said in Casa Rosada, the pink-hued presidential palace made famous in the US by the movie "Evita." "I'm impressed because he has moved rapidly on so many of the reforms that he promised."

Macri, who has committed Argentina to a pro-business approach, was equally effusive about Obama, who leaves office in less than a year.

"You emerged proposing major changes and you showed they were possible that by being bold and with conviction, you could challenge the status quo," Macri said. He added, "That was also a path of inspiration for what our dear country is now going through."

Obama has made no secret of his preference for Macri over the left-leaning Fernandez, whose meandering invectives against the US were a source of frequent eye-rolling in the White House.

Fernandez was close with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's famously anti-American late president, and openly admired Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. She was quick to blame the US for Argentina's problems and was accused of helping Iran hide its role in bombing a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, a claim she denied.

So Obama was all too glad to see Fernandez replaced by Macri, who has started pushing Argentina back toward the political center after years of flirting with the extreme left. To that end, Obama's visit was a reward of sorts to keep that promising trajectory on track.

It's a theme of Obama's Latin America policy that was on vivid display a day earlier in Cuba, where Obama paid a history-making visit aimed at spurring further reforms in the communist country.

Obama's administration has also been heartened by the Venezuelan opposition's recent success in legislative elections and Bolivian President Evo Morales' defeat in a referendum on term limits.

Those developments have fueled optimism in Washington "that Latin America is moving toward more rational economic and political policies," said Gabriel Salvia of the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America, an Argentina-based think tank.