MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina -- President Bush left the Summit of the Americas Saturday with no more than he expected: a cold shoulder from some Latin American leaders, no consensus on a free trading bloc for the hemisphere and biting criticism from anti-U.S. protesters and Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.
It amounted to a nothing-lost-and-little-gained two days for the president.
He may have made progress on setting up a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina. After hours of talks, 29 of the 34 summit nations expressed a desire to keep negotiations alive but adjourned the meeting without agreement.
Bush avoided a potentially embarrassing confrontation with Chavez, whose speeches were a rallying call for thousands of protesters opposed to the trade area and Bush policies. After those demonstrations Friday, a smaller number of hundreds of protesters broke storefronts and set fire to businesses in this seaside resort city. Saturday was calm.
The Bush administration didn't travel to the summit with high hopes.
The White House viewed the stop as important, if only to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the Americas in the face of the widespread impression that his administration's interest in the region has been on the back burner since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The president also had sought to revive negotiations for a vast proposed Western Hemisphere free trade area. Bush argues that such a pact is the best way to help raise the standard of living for Latin Americans, including the estimated 220 million who live in poverty.
By late afternoon Saturday, the closing day of the summit, Bush departed the summit for Brazil on schedule as negotiators extended their sessions and continued talking. Mexico, the United States and 27 other nations support setting an April deadline for new talks on creating the vast new trade zone, but five key countries _ Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela _ are opposed and may not commit to more talks at all.
That was about as much as Bush could hope for. Even before he left Washington, he acknowledged the FTAA was "stalled." There was talk here of moving forward on a free-trade zone that would exclude the five nations.
Flying with Bush to Brazil, where the presidential party landed shortly after nightfall, national security adviser Stephen Hadley denied that the process was deadlocked and said Bush's "view is what's important is the exchange among the leaders."
"His approach is not to try and dominate, but to participate as one of equals and listen and that's what he did," said Hadley. "At a critical time he made his views clear."
He added that "there is nothing in stone that says every time leaders get together they have to have a summit communique."
