MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama has forgotten about Latinamerica, claims Lula da Silva

Lula da Silva: Obama is too busy with Iraq, Afghanistan and the health bill

Brazilian president Lula da Silva claims that his United States peer, Barack Obama has forgotten about Latinamerica after having promised a new relation with the continent. He also revealed he was working for a meeting between Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe “so they can address their differences”.

Brazil’s financial newspaper Valor reproduces some extracts from Lula da Silva’s presentation on Brazilian foreign policy with the Financial Times editors during breakfast in London.

According to Lula da Silva following the Americas Summit last April in Trinidad and Tobago when Obama promised a new relation with Latinamerica, the US president simply forgot about the region.

“I told Obama after the meeting that he had given the kick off to establish a more productive relation with Latinamerica. The fact is nothing happened since, but the coup in Honduras”, pointed out Lula da Silva.

But he also understands Obama, “with concerns over Iraq and Afghanistan and the health scheme in Congress, it doesn’t leave much time to address Latinamerica”.

“But I consider very important that United States should have more interest in Latinamerica so we can definitively implement a dynamics of peace and links with the continent”, said Lula da Silva.

During breakfast with editors from the Financial Times that organized a seminar on Brazil, Lula da Silva was critical of the recent military cooperation agreement signed between Colombia and the US and again strongly demanded guarantees that operations will be limited to Colombian territory.

“We were surprised by the transfer of military bases from Manta, in Ecuador to Colombia”, admitted the Brazilian leader.

“We are not questioning Colombia’s sovereignty but we demand that in the agreement signed with the US, it’s explicit, that we want international law guarantees; that those bases as a matter of principle will operate inside Colombian and not along border areas with neighbouring countries”.

Regarding Washington’s concerns with Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva said it was reciprocal: “I don’t know if the US should be concerned about Chavez or if Chavez should be concerned about the US. One position fuels the other”.

As to differences between Colombia and Venezuela and the alleged threats from Chavez to close the border with its neighbour and ban bilateral trade, Lula da Silva said that “you can’t do politics from media headlines”.

Complementation and interdependency of the two economies is above headlines policies. “How do you stop people along the border trading?”

However he was hopeful that President Chavez will end reaching an understanding with his peer Colombian Alvaro Uribe, for which he is trying to organize a meeting of the two leaders next November 26th in Manaos, Brazil.

Lula da Silva has invited all Amazon basin countries to a regional summit ahead of the Climate conference in Copenhagen next December.

Finally he recalled that he recently had dinner with Chavez and lunch with Uribe, and “I’m sure I can get them to sit together in Manaos”.