MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina, Nov. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States, having long regarded Latin America as its backyard, had huge difficulty in getting its message through concerning free trade, fight against corruption and democracy to the region at the 4th Summit of the Americas.

    Moreover, the country is facing gloomy prospects as its policies are failing and its influence further declining in the region, once Washington's close political and economic partner.

    In a big setback to US President George W. Bush, the summit concluded on Saturday after adopting a final declaration that failed to clearly support the resumption of stalled talks on establishing a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which Washington had demanded.

    This is regarded as an ominous signal to Washington that the US ambition to set up the FTAA might eventually end up in failure.

    What is worse, Bush is suffering an image crisis as his presence here drew tens of thousands of protesters and violent clashes erupted between demonstrators and police here and across the country on Friday. Polls in many Latin American nations show Bush as the least popular US leader in decades.

    President Bush's father, former President George Bush, first proposed the establishment of the FTAA in the 1990s and at the first Summit of the Americas in the United States in 1994, leadersfrom 34 countries who attended the summit agreed to set up such a free trade zone, setting January 2005 as the deadline.

    However, talks on such a zone have bogged down because of sharpdisagreement between the United States and countries like Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

    President Bush has insisted that free trade is the best way to reduce poverty and create employment and he pushed for resuming such trade talks at the summit. However, Bush's call fell on deaf ears.

    Argentina and Brazil, both major food exporters in Latin America, have made it clear that they do not want to join the FTAAas long as the United States does not remove agricultural subsidies. They complain that Washington's agricultural subsidies would eliminate the competitiveness of farm products from other American countries and increase poverty in Latin America.

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of the United States, has said the FTAA is "dead" as it only helps large US companies at the expense of Latin American workers.

    Historically speaking, Latin America, especially South America,has been cool to the US proposal of free trade and economic privatization as those Latin American governments that endorsed the Washington-backed policies were toppled one after another. To the dismay of Washington, key Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela have been shifting toward the left since then.

    Likewise, Bush's call for fighting corruption and strengthening democracy, a central theme in his second term, has drawn lukewarm response from his Latin American counterparts at the Summit of theAmericas.

    Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, in a joint press appearance with President Bush on Friday, warned that any US involvement in Latin America should be "positive and constructive," a demand that Bush might find hard to accept.

    Bush's call for strengthening democracy and fighting corruptionhas little market in Latin America where poverty reduction is more urgent than corruption and democracy.

    Moreover, Latin America has been complaining that the United States neglected the region due to the Iraq war and the war on terrorism.

    Observers point out that the United States, to restore its image and influence in its traditional backyard, must first make genuine efforts to help Latin America fight poverty as nearly 40 percent of the 500 million people in the region are living in poverty and some 100 million of them are living on only 1 US dollar a day. Enditem