After postponing his official visit to china due to pneumonia, the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will travel to Beijing on Tuesday in search of retaking Brazil’s international leadership and discuss peace proposals in Ukraine.
The 77-year-old president, who was originally supposed to travel to China from March 25 to 31, has promised to “replace” Brazil “in the new global geopolitics” after the isolationism of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula will meet on Friday the 14th in Beijing with his counterpart Xi Jinpingwith whom “he will talk about the war in Ukraine”, announced the foreign minister Mauro Vieira to AFP and other international news agencies.
The leftist leader has refused to send ammunition to Ukraine in the name of peace and proposes the formation of a group of mediating countries. Upon his return from China, that group will be “created,” he assured.
Vladimir “Putin cannot keep the territory of Ukraine” while Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky “cannot want it all,” Lula said on Thursday, suggesting that Kiev give up the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine ruled out such an idea.
“There is no legal, political or moral reason to justify abandoning a single centimeter of Ukrainian territory,” said Ukrainian diplomacy spokesman Oleg Nikolenko, despite appreciating “the efforts of the Brazilian president to find a way to stop Russian aggression.” .
Meeting in Moscow
For its part, China, Brazil’s largest trading partner, promotes a 12-point proposal for a resolution of the conflictwhich calls for the cessation of hostilities and dialogue.
“These are basic conditions” for peace, said Vieira, who described Beijing’s approach as “very positive.”
Xi pledged on Friday to “support any effort for a return to peace in Ukraine” in a joint statement with his French counterpart. Emmanuel Macron, visiting Beijing.
But Moscow has ruled out the possibility of Chinese mediation and for now rejects “the prospect of a political solution” to the conflict in Ukraine.
Brazil’s efforts to be part of a solution to the conflict were also reflected in the meeting on March 25 in the Russian capital between Celso Amorim, Lula’s main adviser on international affairs, and Putin.
“To say that the doors are open (for the peace negotiations) would be an exaggeration, but to say that they are closed is not true either,” Amorim told CNN Brasil on Monday.
Amorim, Lula’s foreign minister during his first two terms (2003-2010), also met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who will visit Brazil on April 17.
The BRICS, also on the agenda
Lula will also visit on Thursday Shanghai for the inauguration of his ally and former president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) at the head of the New Development Bank, the bank of the BRICS.
This group, which Brazil integrates along with Russia, India, China and South Africa, was created in 2006, during Lula’s first government.
The visit to China, 100 days after his return to power, highlights Lula’s interest in rebuilding diplomatic ties with strategic countries, after having previously traveled to other capitals such as Buenos Aires and Washington.
Accompanied by parliamentary and party leaders, the president’s agenda will be especially political, after the economic potential of the relationship with Beijing was covered last week.
A business forum welcomed half a thousand Brazilian businessmen -mainly from agribusiness- and Chinese, and more than 20 cooperation agreements were signed, including one that will allow commercial transactions to be carried out in reais and yuan, without requiring dollars.
China is Brazil’s main trading partner: Bilateral exchange registered a record of 150.5 billion dollars in 2022.
Brazil, the largest regional economy, is the main destination for Chinese investment in Latin America (48%), with 70.3 billion dollars between 2007 and 2020, according to the Brazil-China Business Council.
Before returning to Brazil, Lula will travel to the United Arab Emirates on the 15th for a one-day visit.
