Silva: Black US president would be 'extraordinary'

Brazil's president said Friday that the prospect of a black U.S. president "would be an extraordinary thing," but stopped short of endorsing Democrat Barack Obama by name.

"I'm just giving a personal opinion because it's obviously up to the American people and is a sovereign decision," Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. "But I think that, in all the world, there is a little bit of happiness. In the silent minds of each one of us, how good it will be if a black is elected president of the United States."

Silva spoke to reporters while in Havana to celebrate a deal allowing Brazil's state-run oil company to explore for oil in deep Cuban waters.

Silva, who heads Latin America's largest economy, had said previously he thought Obama would likely win Tuesday's U.S. presidential election against Republican John McCain. But he had abstained from publicly expressing a preference.

The Brazilian leader, a working-class labor leader who became head of state, suggested that an Obama win would continue a trend of unlikely victories across the American hemisphere.

"Just as Brazil elected a metal worker, Bolivia elected an Indian, Venezuela elected (socialist leader Hugo) Chavez and Paraguay a bishop, I think that it would be an extraordinary thing if, in the largest economy in the world, a black were elected president of the United States," he said.