Colombia lottery uses Obama image

Barack Obama was chosen because of his popularity, officials say

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has made an unusual appearance - on lottery tickets in the South American country of Colombia.

His image was used on the 22 October tickets for the lottery in the central Meta region of the country.

Lottery official Luis Enciso said they liked to put "people of the moment" on their tickets.

US opinion polls suggest Mr Obama is ahead of his Republican rival John McCain for the 4 November election.

The Meta lottery said it sold 700,000 tickets on the day Mr Obama's face appeared, bringing in around 30m pesos (US $12,000) - a similar total to previous weeks.

"We picked Obama's portrait for our lottery because we're always looking for somebody people are raving about. He's ahead in (US) opinion polls and right now he's the most popular guy around here," Mr Enciso told the AFP news agency.

The president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, is a staunch ally of President George W Bush.

But he apparently indicated this week that he expects Barack Obama to be the next president.

He told trade unionists he would discuss the issue of restrictions on unionists "when he is president of the United States", the Associated Press reports.