By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 10, 2007 1:06 PM

ANCHORENA PARK, Uruguay, March 10 -- President Bush said Saturday that his administration is working to put a halt to law enforcement abuses of new anti-terrorist intelligence-gathering powers, and he expressed continued confidence in the attorney general and FBI director.

"These problems will be addressed as quickly as possible," Bush said at a news conference during a stop here on his six-day Latin America tour.

In his first comments on the matter since the Justice Department released an inspector general report uncovering misuse of laws passed after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush said he was briefed last week before leaving Washington and demanded that his aides figure out how to stop improper intrusions into privacy.

"My question is what are you going to do to solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved," he said.

The president praised the inspector general for "good and necessary work" and added that he was pleased that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller moved quickly to respond. "He took responsibility as he should have," Bush said. "I've got confidence in Director Mueller, as I do in the attorney general," Alberto Gonzales.

But Bush defended the need for tools such as the national security letters, which are used by the FBI to demand information from businesses and individuals without the court order normally required for a subpoena. Such methods, he said, are "important to the security of the United States" as it tries to track down and capture terrorists.

The domestic issue intruded on the second day of Bush's trip to the region, which is taking him to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. Bush hopes to use the tour to persuade Latin Americans that he cares about entrenched poverty and other "social justice" issues in a region that has felt neglected for years by Washington.

But his travels have been shadowed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the flamboyant anti-American leftist who staged a massive anti-Bush protest in nearby Buenos Aires on Friday night and cried out, "Go home, Gringo!"

Bush flew by helicopter Saturday morning to the scenic, woodsy, waterfront ranch of Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez to share a beef lunch and discuss trade. For the second day in a row, Bush was asked by a reporter why he refused to even utter Chavez's name and he again avoided answering the question, instead saying he wanted to present a positive and constructive message to the region.

Bush arrived in Uruguay on Friday night after a day in Sao Paulo, where he announced a new energy partnership with Brazil to promote wider production of ethanol throughout the region as an alternative to oil, the first step in an effort to strengthen economic and political alliances in Latin America.

The agreementwas crafted to expand research, share technology, stimulate new investment and develop common international standards for biofuels. The United States and Brazil, which make 70 percent of the world's ethanol, will team up to encourage other nations to produce and consume alternative fuels, starting in Central America and the Caribbean.

The new alliance could serve not only to help meet Bush's promise to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption but also to diminish the influence of Chavez, who has used his country's vast oil reserves to build support among neighbors. Analysts have called it the beginning of a new OPEC-style cartel for ethanol makers, a characterization U.S. officials dispute because they say they want to expand, not control, production.

"It's in the interest of the United States that there be a prosperous neighborhood," Bush said during a hard-hat tour of a fuel depot with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. "And one way to help spread prosperity in Central America is for them to become energy producers, not become -- not remain dependent on others for their energy sources."

Lula, pointing to economic and environmental benefits of ethanol, said the alliance marks "a new moment for the global car industry, a new moment for fuel in general in the world and possibly a new moment for humanity."

But ethanol politics are complicated at home and abroad. Under pressure from farm-state lawmakers in the United States, Bush on Friday refused to discuss Lula's desire to reduce a 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol, which protects domestic corn-based ethanol producers. That led to charges of double standards, given the Bush administration's longtime advocacy of free trade.

The emphasis on ethanol has also drawn criticism from environmentalists and others who complain that it will create more problems. Because the United States makes ethanol from corn, it has already caused price increases, for example, for tortillas in Mexico. Brazil makes ethanol from sugar cane, and critics say increased production would result in further deforestation of the Amazon.

Greenpeace issued a statement saying that limits on carbon emissions, which Bush opposes, would be a better way to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. "The U.S. government must take a giant leap forward quickly in order to make the necessary steps to combat global warming," said John Coequyt, an energy specialist with Greenpeace. "An aggressive focus on ethanol, without a federally mandated cap on emissions, is simply a leap sideways."

Some specialists, though, said the deal could have a significant impact on energy.

"This is the first effort to jump-start a Western Hemisphere ethanol market, involving both trade and local development, which would reduce the pressure of high oil prices on the balance of payments of countries in the region," said Dan Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "It also represents the fact that Brazil is moving to the fore as an energy leader, along with Venezuela, in the region."

But analysts expressed skepticism that Bush would be able to wean Latin Americans away from Chavez. "Bush may be aiming at Chavez with his 'ethanol diplomacy,' but Lula clearly is not," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "He is happy to have good commercial relations with the United States and expand these in any area, but he has made it clear that he is not going to downgrade his good relations with Venezuela."

The ethanol pact came as Bush sought to renew U.S. commitments to a region estranged from the United States. The president appeared irritated when a Brazilian journalist asked during a brief news conference on Friday what he was doing to "make up for the losses" in relations with the region.

"I strongly disagree with your description of U.S. foreign policy," Bush replied. "That may be what people say, but it's certainly not what the facts bear out."

The president repeated his assertion that he has doubled direct foreign assistance to Latin America to $1.6 billion since 2001, without mentioning that his latest budget actually proposes cutting that aid to $1.47 billion. Moreover, analysts question his math, saying he is using a false comparison to exaggerate increases in aid.

Rogerio Schmitt, a political analyst here, said Lula hoped to use the meeting with Bush to project himself as an alternative to Chavez, able to enter partnerships with leaders of all ideological leanings. Whether the United States would equally benefit by being seen as an alternative to Chavez is another matter, he said. "Most people in Brazil see Chavez as a lunatic, a fool," Schmitt said. "But his popularity here is still probably higher than President Bush's."

The ethanol alliance follows Bush's pledge to reduce the projected use of gasoline in the United States by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

Brazil, a pioneer in biofuel technology since the 1970s, has become the world's largest exporter of ethanol and reinvented its own economy as a result. About 40 percent of Brazil's non-diesel gasoline consumption has been replaced by ethanol, and more than 70 percent of the cars and trucks now sold in Brazil are flex-fuel vehicles that consume either gasoline or ethanol.

The effects of that economic transformation can be seen on the streets of this city, where all service stations sell ethanol and gasoline. At a typical station, ethanol is about $3 a gallon compared with about $5 a gallon for gas.

Correspondent Monte Reel in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.