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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva began a visit to Portugal on Saturday. The president seeks to put his country back on the international scene. But he will have to deal with the consequences of his closeness to China and Russia.
On his first trip to Europe since returning to power in January, the icon of the Latin American left chose to pay a four-day state visit to the former colonial power from which Brazil gained independence in 1822.
Lula arrived in Lisbon on Friday, although he was received on Saturday with a welcome ceremony before meeting his conservative counterpart Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
In his third term at the head of the South American giant, Lula hopes to put his country back on the international scene, after the isolation caused by his predecessor, the right-wing and controversial Jair Bolsonaro.
It is a balancing act for the Brazilian president, who sparked a lively controversy after meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and urging the United States to stop “fostering war” in Ukraine. He also addressed the European Union, a bloc that has supported Kiev financially and militarily, and encouraged it to “start talking about peace.”
The United States was quick to accuse Lula of “echoing Russian and Chinese propaganda, disregarding the facts.”
Last Monday, Lula repeated the offense by receiving the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Brasilia, which unleashed a hail of criticism. Lula changed his tune on Tuesday and condemned Russia’s “violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
In Portugal, a founding member of NATO and one of the first European countries to supply kyiv with tanks, the ambiguity of Brasilia did not make a good impression.
At this Luso-Brazilian summit, the first in seven years, a dozen bilateral agreements will be signed, mainly in the energy, science, education and tourism sectors.
On Monday, after a meeting with businessmen near Porto (north), Lula will participate in the delivery of the highest distinction in Portuguese-language literature, the Camoes Award, to the famous Brazilian singer and author Chico Buarque, a well-known leftist and opponent of the military dictatorship in Brazil. This award had been announced in 2019, but Bolsonaro refused to sign the necessary documents for it to be officially delivered.
Before flying to Madrid on Tuesday, Lula will address the Portuguese Parliament ahead of commemorations of the 49th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, which ended 48 years of right-wing dictatorship and 13 years of the European country’s colonial wars in Africa.
with AFP
