MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama or McCain, Latam policy “more or less the same”

Candidates McCain & Obama

United States policy towards Latinamerica will remain “more or less” on the same terms whether John McCain or Democrat Barak Obama wins the coming November presidential election, said US ambassador in Nicaragua Robert Callahan.

"We're going to have more or less the same policy as in the last thirty years towards Latinamerica", said the diplomat while answering questions during a business forum in Managua, capital of Nicaragua. Callahan a professional diplomat, an expert in government diplomacy and a former member of the US National Intelligence Agency talked about relations between Washington and Managua during the event at the US-Nicaragua Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Callahan said that US policy towards Latinamerica "has not changed much since the time of President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)". "Since then it marked a profound change in our policy towards Latinamerica, and I believe all US administrations since have adopted a policy of trying to promote democracy and economic development as well as complying with human rights", he underlined. "Obviously there's a different emphasis in policies but basically it is more or less the same since the government of Mr. Carter", underlined Callahan. Callahan was press attaché at the US embassy in Honduras in the eighties when the ambassador was current Under Secretary of State John Negroponte. At the time the Ronald Reagan administration was intensely involved in Central American politics supporting regimes that faced threats from Marxist oriented armed rebel groups.