RIO DE JANEIRO -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to the 40th Organization of American States General Assembly meeting on Sunday with two priorities, neither of which were published in the meeting's agenda: to shore up support for Honduras' re-entry to the OAS, and to gather momentum behind the Obama administration's drive to impose sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council.
It was a program designed to confront, without naming, the country that has become the greatest challenge to the Obama administration in Latin America -- Brazil.
To be sure, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has stood out as the most strident opponent to U.S. policy in the hemisphere since he was first inaugurated in 1999. When the U.S. and Colombia negotiated a defense agreement last year that would give the U.S. greater access to several of Colombia's military bases, Chávez scrapped economic and diplomatic ties with Bogotá. Chávez has relentlessly prodded the Obama administration to ease its economic and diplomatic isolation of Cuba. And now, Chávez is pushing just as hard to keep Honduras excluded from the OAS.