2023-06-19 05:33:00
Very active on the diplomatic level, Brazilian President Lula has resolutely put his country back on the international scene, but his positions on Ukraine and Venezuela have sparked controversy.
Since the start of his third term in January, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has already taken part in 33 meetings with foreign leaders.
Either, according to a count of the newspaper O Globo, one more than his far-right predecessor – and assumed isolationist – Jair Bolsonaro in … four years.
And the list will grow with other summit meetings scheduled for this week, with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and Pope Francis in the Vatican.
“The mere fact that Lula is not Bolsonaro has won him considerable goodwill” from the international community, specialist Oliver Stuenkel recently wrote in an article on the Brazilian Report website.
Many leaders have traveled to Brasilia to meet Lula in the first half of his term.
Several countries, including the United States, Germany or the United Kingdom, have pledged to contribute to the Amazon Fund, dedicated to the preservation of the largest tropical forest on the planet, which had been frozen under Bolsonaro.
At the end of May, the Brazilian president announced that the UN climate conference COP30 would take place in Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon, in 2025. “An honor”, he said.
Mediation of the conflict in Ukraine
Lula has repeatedly said that Brazil are “back” on the international stage, but that return has also been marked by controversy.
Brazil has refused to supply arms to Ukraine or impose sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and its idea of forming a “peace group” of neutral countries mediating the conflict has met with cold reception.
During a trip to China, Lula said the United States must stop “encouraging war”. In return, Washington accused him of “echoing Russian and Chinese propaganda”.
A meeting between Lula and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled for last month, during the G7 summit in Japan, but it ultimately did not take place, officially for problems of incompatibility of agenda.
According to former diplomat Paulo Roberto de Almeida, this posture vis-à-vis the Ukrainian conflict is in line with the “usual anti-Americanism of the Workers’ Party” of Lula, whose first two presidential terms were held from 2003 to 2010.
But it is above all due “to the alliance with large autocracies” such as Russia or China, which are like Brazil members of the Brics group, with India and South Africa.
Beijing-Washington Split
Lula must play the balancing act, on a world chessboard marked by disputes between Beijing and Washington.
China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, but the United States is an essential ally of the Brazilian president in his fight for the defense of democracy and the environment.
He did not fail to visit both countries during the first months of his mandate.
But the trip to Washington in February was limited to a meeting with Joe Biden, without any concrete announcement, while numerous economic cooperation agreements were signed in April in Beijing.
Another issue that is close to the heart of President Lula: the strengthening of ties between South American countries, marked by ideological differences in recent years.
But the summit between heads of state of the region organized at the end of May in Brasilia practically had the opposite effect, due to controversial remarks by the icon of the Brazilian left on Venezuela.
Lula described the accusations of authoritarianism hanging over his Venezuelan socialist counterpart Nicolas Maduro, welcomed with great fanfare in the Brazilian capital the day before the summit, as “narrative”.
These remarks earned him criticism from Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou (center-right), but also from that of Chile Gabriel Boric (left).
“With these statements, Lula has torpedoed any chance of success at the summit”, the first of this type in almost ten years, criticizes Paulo Roberto de Almeida.
Pedro Brites, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, believes for his part that a “more critical tone towards Maduro would put an end to the dialogue” with Venezuela, which was completely broken under Bolsonaro.
19/06/2023 05:32:33 – Brasilia (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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