WASHINGTON, D.C., (CMC):

A number of political analysts and developmental experts predict US President Barack Obama may face a group of leaders far less forgiving than their European counterparts about Washington's central role in the global financial crisis when they converge on Trinidad and Tobago this weekend.

Obama plans to take his message of partnership to the Caribbean and Latin America at the April 17-19 Fifth Summit of the Americas.

The Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) said the region, over the last five years, had posted the "fastest economic growth rates in the world," lifting millions out of poverty.

But IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno said those gains were "threatened by the global economic downturn". He noted that the hemisphere's "first economic crisis" was not made in the region.