FACTBOX: New ties and old ideologies jostle

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama and 33 other leaders from the Americas met in a three-day summit in Trinidad and Tobago to debate economic, energy and security challenges facing the hemisphere.

They talked of forging a new partnership to tackle present and future problems.

Following is a sample of comments from some of the leaders:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

"What we showed here is that we can make progress when we're willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long."

"We showed that there are no senior or junior partners in the Americas; we're simply partners, committed to advancing a common agenda and overcoming common challenges."

"The United States remains the most powerful, wealthiest nation on Earth, but we're only one nation, and the problems that we confront, whether it's drug cartels, climate change, terrorism, you name it, can't be solved just by one country. And I think if you start with that approach, then you are inclined to listen and not just talk."

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA

"Obama took a plunge into Latin America ... We created a new way of viewing each other and of overcoming our differences by debating them."

"A new dynamic can be created. Let's be frank, everyone expected Chavez and Obama would attack each other and the exact opposite happened ... War did not break out and we had an exceptional meeting."

(On the region's relations with the United States)

"We have to stop this mania of (thinking that) we're small, we're poor, that someone has to come and help us. We might want financing, but it's we who have to look after our own problems."

"Diversity is positive. We mustn't fear it."

VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ

"We're not anybody's backyard any more, and nobody should try to make us that any more, and we're not anybody's colony, we are free peoples."

"I've been really pleased to meet the president of the United States, 'I want to be your friend.'"

CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER

"We don't need to have ideological harangues ... But the fact that we did have a good hemispheric meeting I think bodes well for better general relations in the future and moving ahead more productively on core economic areas with almost everybody on board."

ST VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES PRIME MINISTER RALPH GONSALVES

"He (Obama) is a cool man, he's intellectual, he wants to have a fresh start, new directions, he's not encumbered by the mistakes of the past. We are moving forward and also President Chavez and other persons on the 'left' of the political spectrum. I think, generally speaking, there has been a meeting of the minds but one swallow a summer does not make."

BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT EVO MORALES

"It's impossible to forget the past."

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher, Patrick Markey and Guido Nejamkis)