Sen. John McCain has had a decades-long history of involvement in Latin America -- including a romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian girlfriend, the presidential candidate's foreign policy advisor said Friday.

Speaking at an Americas Conference panel discussion on the next U.S. president's Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine mentioned that the Arizona senator was born in Panama, traveled the region for years and had a Brazilian flame who recently emerged in the press. Proof, he said, that McCain's interest in the hemisphere runs long and deep.

''In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed,'' Fontaine said at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. ``She's a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sort of speaks to the long experience he has had in the region -- in the most positive terms.''

But that's not all, Fontaine said.

''In a more official capacity, I mean certainly in Central America in the 1980s he was one of the few senators that traveled down to Central America quite frequently to deal with the issues that faced America at the time,'' he said. ``He dealt with the environmental act, having traveled the Amazon rain forest in Brazil and the Galapagos.''

The romance Fontaine referred to was with former model Maria Gracinda Teixeira de Jesus, who recently gave an interview to Brazil's O Globo saying the former Navy pilot was quite the kisser. According to McCain's memoirs, Faith of My Fathers, they met in 1957, when his ship, the USS Hunt, docked in Brazil.

''I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,'' she said. ``He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss.''

Asked afterward about whether he was suggesting that McCain's fling with the Brazilian counted as Latin America foreign policy experience, Fontaine said: ``The only thing I was trying to convey was that his experience goes back a long way.''

``He was born in Panama, which illustrates a lifetime spent in Latin America. He has known a lot of people. The thing about the Brazilian girlfriend was in his first memoir and it stuck in my brain. Look at the two candidates and contrast his extensive experience. That's the only point I was trying to make.''

After the conference was over and the story had swept through cyberspace, Fontaine called to clarify that his remarks were ``a bad attempt at humor.''

Teixiera said McCain ``was not only a good kisser; he was good at everything. He was a great love of mine. But he left and it ended. Otherwise, I would be up there with him . . . I was a model and he was a military man who traveled a lot. I'll never forget him, and I would never have imagined that he would write a book and talk about me.''

If he wins the White House race, she says she will send a telegram congratulating him. She'll sign it, ``your great Brazilian love.''

Special correspondents Alejandra Labanca and Francisco Maradiaga contributed to this report.

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