Bush in summit hot seat

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina — President Bush arrived in this beach resort city on Thursday night for a gathering of Western Hemisphere leaders after one of the worst weeks of his presidency, only to be greeted by strong anti-American sentiment and taunts from Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chavez.

Chavez, who has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of trying to assassinate him and invade his oil-rich country, is using the international summit meeting here to protest the administration's free-trade message and to attempt a showdown with Bush, the man the Venezuelan government calls "Mr. Danger."

Air Force One landed shortly after 8 p.m. on a rainy spring evening, and Bush went immediately to his hotel, the Sheraton Mar del Plata, on a bluff overlooking the South Atlantic.

Bush and Chavez are expected to see each other in a group session at the opening today of the Summit of the Americas, a two-day, 34-nation gathering. The meeting is officially to focus on creating jobs and promoting democracy. But Chavez said this week that his main goal at the meeting was the "final burial" of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas accord, which already is stalled.

The White House strategy is to ignore Chavez as much as possible. "President Chavez has been pretty vocal about how he sees the summit and what he hopes to achieve at the summit," Thomas A. Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday while it headed for Argentina. "I mean, he's going to behave the way he wants to behave."

Even so, on Tuesday Bush did not denounce a longstanding request from Chavez that the Argentine government build a nuclear reactor in Venezuela for energy production.

"I guess if I were a taxpayer in Venezuela, I would wonder about the energy supply that Venezuela has," Bush said in an interview at the White House on Tuesday with a group of reporters from Latin American publications. "But maybe it makes sense." Bush added that "it's the first I've heard of it."

A little more than 24 hours later, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, appeared to backtrack somewhat when he noted that Chavez had asked a number of countries to build a nuclear reactor in Venezuela, and that he was far from a deal.

"I think that's because people recognize that it would be problematic for Chavez to be in the nuclear business, if you will," Hadley said, adding that "this trip, this summit, is not about Hugo Chavez."