QUITO, Ecuador – Venturing into one of Latin America’s less friendly capitals, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared on Tuesday that the Obama administration was intent on having better relationships in this region, even with leftist governments like Ecuador’s, which became stridently anti-American during the Bush administration.

“I don’t know any two countries that agree on everything,” Mrs. Clinton said after more than two hours of meetings and lunch with President Rafael Correa. “From our perspective, we have reached out and feel very much as though we are forging a new set of relationships.”

Mr. Correa – who aligns himself with the Venezuela’s leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, and who once said Mr. Chavez’s comparison of George W. Bush to Satan was unfair to the devil – seemed charmed.

“The new left that I represent is not anti-anything,” he insisted. “We’re not anti-American; we love America.” He said he was relieved that the policies of the Bush years were over, and added that his years of studying at the University of Illinois had been the happiest of his life.

Mrs. Clinton’s stopover, on the second day of a four-day swing through Latin America, was a modest effort to try to pull Mr. Correa away from his leftist colleagues. But his popularity in the region suggests he is unlikely to swear off moves like keeping ties with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Nor did the warm words from both leaders after their meeting mask real disputes between the United States and Ecuador, chiefly over an agreement with neighboring Colombia that broadens American access to military bases there to train Colombian soldiers to crack down on drug traffickers.

Ecuador said the program poses a threat to the sovereignty of Latin American countries. Mr. Correa said that there were good reasons for Ecuador to remain suspicious, but that Mrs. Clinton had shared information about the program in an effort to settle his concerns.

“I want to put your mind at ease,” she said afterward. “This agreement between the United States and Colombia is solely intended to assist Colombia in its struggle against internal threats.”

There were hints of steel behind Mr. Correa’s smile, particularly when pressed about why the Obama administration has not been able to put relations with several Latin American countries on better footing.

“If you feel that Ecuador should bow to outside pressure, you will not find that in Ecuador, or Venezuela, or Bolivia,” Mr. Correa said. Bolivia, like Venezuela, has taken an increasingly anti-American line.

During their meeting, Mrs. Clinton also pushed Mr. Correa to improve his record on press freedom. Ecuador is debating a new media law that critics say is intended to crack down on the press. A local journalist rose to publicly warn against the new law, earning a sharp rebuke from Mr. Correa, who said the law was needed to curb abuses by powerful media owners.

After her meeting with Mr. Correa, Mrs. Clinton delivered a speech at a museum in which she called for more economic equality across Latin America. Among a list of remedies, she called for tax reform to curb rampant evasion and to reduce the burden of taxes on the poor.

“It is also a simple fact that the wealthy do not pay their fair share,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We can’t mince words about this. Levels of tax evasion are unacceptably high – as much or more than 50 percent in some of this region’s economies when it comes to personal income tax.”

“Acknowledging this is not class warfare; it is not even us-versus-them rhetoric,” she said. “It is a matter of recognizing that this cannot be a zero-sum game. We cannot take a winner-takes-all approach to our economic future.”

Mrs. Clinton also cited the growth of the black-market economy, which further reduces tax receipts of overburdened governments. She praised President Correa for working to increase social inclusion in Ecuador, which still suffers from wide disparities of wealth in urban and rural areas.

He returned the praise, saying that he admired both her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. As for the current American president, he said people in Latin America “loved” Barack Obama.