SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ease long-standing resentment of U.S. policies in Latin America by showing up this week for events that highlight Washington's awkward history with the region.

Clinton attended the inauguration of El Salvador's first leftist president on Monday. The new leader comes from a party of a former Marxist rebel group that fought a 12-year war against successive conservative governments and a military supported by billions of dollars in aid from Washington.

On Tuesday in Honduras, Clinton planned to be at a top-level meeting of the Organization of American States that will test the Obama administration's new openness toward Cuba.

In two days of events in El Salvador, Clinton repeatedly stressed that she and President Barack Obama were committed to a "new approach to the region," one that emphasized engagement and cooperation and not ideological battles.

"We have to build a more positive relationship," she told employees at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador after new Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was sworn in.

"We have to recognize that our country is not perfect either, that some of the difficulties that we had historically in forging strong and lasting relationships in our hemisphere are a result of us perhaps not listening, perhaps not paying enough attention," Clinton said.

Funes is a one-time journalist and member of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which fought U.S.-backed Salvadoran regimes from 1980 to 1992. His inauguration marked the country's first peaceful transition of power from right to left since the end of the war.

"By putting aside old conflicts and coming together in a peaceful transition of power, you have affirmed the strength and durability of your democracy," Clinton said in a brief statement played on a local radio station.

She pledged a commitment to renewed U.S. cooperation in the region.

"In El Salvador and throughout the region, we are focused not on old battles but on new partnerships that improve lives, advance democratic principles and promote the common good," she told a meeting of regional trade and foreign ministers on Sunday.

"And we seek to work in a spirit of mutual respect with those who share our goal to make the Americas more peaceful and more prosperous," Clinton said.

Funes has promised good relations with the United States but El Salvador will no longer be the sure supporter of U.S. policies it was under the previous conservative government that allied itself closely with President George W. Bush's administration.

In his inauguration speech, he vowed to restore ties with Cuba, leaving the United States as the last country in the Western Hemisphere without full diplomatic relations with the nation.

On Tuesday in Honduras, the 34 countries in the Organization of American States may vote on whether to reverse Cuba's nearly 50-year-old suspension from the group.

U.S. officials, who insist that Cuba must first make democratic reforms, want to stall a vote.

Although Obama has signaled some willingness to back away from a half-century of U.S. policy toward the communist country, his administration says it will not support any effort to get Cuba back into the OAS until it changes its political system.

A vote could put the U.S. on the spot. Although the OAS generally operates by consensus, a two-thirds majority vote, or 23 countries, is all that's needed for a resolution to pass.

Clinton said Sunday the Obama administration was committed to a "new approach to the hemisphere and to Cuba" and was pleased Havana has accepted a U.S. proposal to resume suspended immigration talks and restore direct mail links between the two countries.

"We have said that we look forward to the day when Cuba, if it so wishes, can rejoin the OAS," she said, adding, however, that "we believe that membership in the OAS comes with responsibilities and that the we must all hold each other accountable."

By MATTHEW LEE , The Associated Press, June 1, 2009