COSTA DO SAUIPE (Brazil), Dec 17: A summit of Latin American leaders demanded an end to the 46-year-old US embargo on Cuba and focussed on hopes on Wednesday that strained ties with Washington will change under incoming president Barack Obama.

Presidents and top officials from 33 countries covering virtually all of Latin America and the Caribbean --- including Cuban President Raul Castro on his first foreign tour abroad --- were keen to turn the page on their experience with US President George W. Bush’s administration.

The leaders issued a special statement demanding an end to the US economic sanctions imposed on Cuba since 1962. The Rio Group --- a policy-coordinating bloc covering most of the region --- also welcomed Cuba as its newest member in a pointed challenge to Washington’s bid to isolate Havana.

Castro, making his first appearance at a multilateral forum outside Cuba since taking over from his brother Fidel more than two years ago, called his country’s welcome into the group a “transcendental moment”.

The leader of the only one-party communist state in the region also thanked his counterparts for their support in calling for an end to the “illegal and unjust” US embargo.

Bolivian President Evo Morales urged the leaders at the summit to give Washington an ultimatum: lift the embargo on Cuba or risk having its ambassadors kicked out of the region.

“If the new United States government doesn’t lift the economic blockade, we should expel its ambassadors,” said Morales, one of a growing number of leftwing leaders taking Latin America out of the US orbit. He said such a step would be “a radical move so that solidarity is truly expressed”.

Oil-rich Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s main ally and a frequent critic of the United States, said as he arrived for the summit that “a new era is starting” in the region, one free of US influence.—AFP