The president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, received an invitation on Monday to visit the US president, Joe Biden, but one of his spokesmen clarified that the trip to Washington, initially scheduled for this month, could be postponed until after his inauguration.
“I received today from the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s invitation to visit him at the White House. I am encouraged to talk with President Biden and deepen the relationship between our countries,” the progressive leader said on Twitter after a two-hour meeting with US envoys.
The visit to the United States was one of the issues that Lula addressed in his conversation with the White House National Security Advisor and with the Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the National Security Council, Juan González.
The leader of the leftist Workers Party (PT) intended to travel to the United States in December, before assuming his third term as head of state of Brazil on January 1, but the visit will apparently have to be postponed, according to the former Brazilian foreign minister. Celso Amorim, Lula’s adviser on international affairs.
Sullivan “insisted that President Biden would receive him even before taking office, but President Lula commented on the internal situation and the measures he has to adopt,” Amorin said in statements to reporters.
According to the former foreign minister, a member of the president-elect’s transition team and who participated in the meeting, Lula “did not say no, but that he might not succeed, although he greatly appreciated that the invitation had been made that way.”
“Brazil is once again being respected by the world,” Lula said when commenting on the invitation he received in a comment he made on his Instagram account and in reference to the isolation of the country during the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.
Despite the fact that Biden’s top foreign policy adviser visited Brazil with the intention of meeting both the outgoing and incoming president, Bolsonaro preferred to be represented by his Secretary for Strategic Affairs, Admiral Flavio Rocha, with whom the members of the delegation American met at the US embassy in Brasilia.
According to Amorim, in addition to political issues, among which he cited the threats to democracy in both countries due to the actions of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Lula spoke with Sullivan especially about the G20 and the environment. “It was a very broad conversation” that addressed regional issues, technological cooperation for sustainable development, climate change and strengthening democracy, said the former foreign minister. “They talked about everything, mainly the last G20 meeting and the need for a new global governance.”