MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula da Silva on state visit to UK

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva begins Tuesday a two days state visit to Great Britain where he plans to strongly lobby for an end to rich countries agriculture subsidies and support for the development of alternatives energies such as ethanol and biodiesel.

Lula's delegation includes heavy weights Finance Minister Antonio Palocci; Industry and Foreign Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan and Foreign Secretary Celso Amorim plus ministers from Science and Technology, Education and Culture.

President Lula, a former Marxist radical union leader, will be meeting with Queen Elizabeth and spending a night at Buckingham Palace.

Before leaving for London President Lula said he was planning to have "a long, interesting exchange" with Prime Minister Tony Blair on the current World Trade Organization negotiations.

"I've been talking about WTO rounds with Blair since December?we must succeed in convincing the European Union to show, in representation of the rich countries, more flexibility in a real reduction of farm subsidies", anticipated President Lula.

The Brazilian president has proposed a summit of leaders from the Group of Eight, G-8, with their G 20 counterparts, from emerging countries, to ensure that the Doha round negotiations end fruitfully. However the initiative so far has not had much echo.

Another issue in the agenda with Prime Minister Blair is the promotion of alternative energies such as ethanol (alcohol from sugar cane) and biodiesel, two areas where Brazil has a technology and capacity edge in the world.

"I'm convinced Britain and Brazil can achieve a very significant business association", he emphasised.

Several UK/Brazil contracts are in the pipeline waiting to be confirmed among which a steel and mining project involving 2.5 billion US dollars to be invested by British company Rio Tinto. However since the undertaking in Corumba is in a border area, next to Bolivia, a special Congressional exception is needed. Apparently President Lula has promised to send the request to Congress.

Similarly with a 300 million US dollars lab for manufacturing rotavirus vaccines involving the giant pharmaceutical GlaxoSmith Kline: Brazil demands a quick transfer of technology to approve the project.

Bilateral trade with UK reached almost 4 billion US dollars last year, with a 1.2 billion surplus for Brazil. UK supplies machinery, automobiles, beverages and most important enriched uranium for Brazil's two nuclear plants. Brazil sends to UK mostly minerals and farm produce.