Brazil's leader eats with the left

January 3, 2003 BY ALAN CLENDENNING

BRASILIA, Brazil--Breakfast with Hugo Chavez, dinner with Fidel Castro.

The first day in office for Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, projects the image of a leftist alliance in Latin America--one that Chavez, Venezuela's president, has already nicknamed the ''Axis of Good.''

Such an alliance could hinder U.S. efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to the tip of Argentina by 2005. www.suntimes.com Despite the perception of a new Latin American troika, doubts abound that Silva really wants to form a bloc with such close ties to Chavez and Castro, Cuba's leader.

But by giving Latin America's other two leftist leaders such a warm welcome a day after his inauguration, Silva gets huge political mileage in Brazil, where Castro and Chavez are revered by the far left of his party.

Silva angered his party's left wing by appointing fiscal moderates to key cabinet posts, but needs its help to push programs through Congress, where he lacks a majority.

The United States sent trade representative Robert Zoellick to the inauguration, seen by the Brazilians as something of a snub because Zoellick suggested last October that Brazil's only trading partner would be Antarctica if it did not join the hemispheric trade zone.

Silva responded by calling Zoellick ''the sub secretary of a sub secretary of a sub secretary'' during his election campaign. AP