CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain arrived in Colombia on Tuesday for talks on trade, drugs and human rights in a visit aimed at showcasing his foreign policy experience over that of Democratic rival Barack Obama.McCain, is meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and other officials in the first leg of a three-day journey that will also include Mexico. "We want to talk about drugs to a large degree. We want to talk about the progress that they've made against the FARC," McCain told reporters about the goals of his visit, referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an outlawed leftist guerrilla group.
Free trade will also be on the agenda, he said during the flight to the South American nation. Human rights -- an issue that critics encouraged him to bring up -- will be on the table as will Uribe's call for a new election.
"Wherever there's a single abuse of human rights, it concerns me," McCain said. "I will also add that there has also been significant improvement (in Colombia) and I want to see that improvement continue."
McCain has highlighted Obama's opposition to a free trade agreement with Colombia as a key difference between their respective candidacies, and though he pledged not to criticize the Illinois senator on foreign soil, he pushed for the pact. "He doesn't support the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. I think it would ... have very serious consequences if we rebuked our closest ally," McCain said on Monday.
He brushed off concerns that his advocacy for such an agreement would not play well in important electoral states, such as Ohio, where many people blame a loss of manufacturing jobs on free trade agreements. McCain said he understood the concerns, and advocated training programs to get the unemployed back to work.
On Thursday he is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City before returning to Arizona for the July 4 U.S. Independence Day holiday. Immigration will be a key issue in McCain's talks in Mexico. "I want to work with the Mexican government on securing our border," he said. "It would be so much easier if we had the ability to trust our neighbors to the south as much as we trust our neighbors to the north as far as cooperation on border security is concerned."