US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns. AFP PHOTO

The State Department's number two diplomat, Nicholas Burns, said a string of recent elections had brought "responsible" centrist governments to power across the continent and isolated the anti-US Venezuelan leader.

"I think Chavez is losing influence," Burns said in remarks to a meeting of US business leaders at the State Department.

He went on to appeal to Bolivian President, Evo Morales, a key Chavez ally, to return to the "mainstream" and join fellow Latin American leaders who want to work with and not against the United States.

Burns said Chavez and his fiery brand of anti-American, left-wing populism appeared to be "on the rise" just six months ago.

"Chavez is using his petro-dollars to finance all sorts of nefarious activities in our hemisphere; he's openly challenging the United States; Evo Morales was elected in Bolivia; (and) there's Fidel Castro and his brother in Havana," Burns said of Chavez's efforts.

But a year of elections had changed the landscape significantly, he said.

"You've seen the election of either responsible left-of-center governments, such as in Brazil and Chile, or center and center-right governments, such as in Mexico and Colombia," he said.

Burns said all the new governments, with the exception of Ortega's Nicaragua, shared the US agenda of expanding regional free trade and private-sector investment and building democratisation.

"The agenda ... is to have a hemisphere that is united with the United States, not divided from the United States," he said.

"I think that's the trend forward in Latin America," he said

"I probably would have given you a different answer in the middle of this year, but we're encouraged by what we see in Latin America."

Burns went on to assert that Venezuela's failure to gain election to the UN Security Council two weeks ago was a direct result of unease among even Chavez allies over a UN General Assembly speech in September in which he famously called US President George W. Bush a devil.

"People see him for what he is - he's somebody who divides, who throws little bombs - rhetorical bombs into rooms, and he seeks to tear people down," Burns said.

The US diplomat called on Morales, whose left-wing government has been nationalizing his country's oil and gas resources, to also break with Chavez and join his moderate counterparts.

"I guess there's no hope for Castro - the Castro brothers, there's no hope for Chavez, but we would like to encourage President Morales to go with the mainstream," he said.