MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil’s future as emerging power “linked to regional situation”

Brazil’s future as an emerging power is closely linked to the regional situation according to President Lula da Silva’s international affairs advisor Marco Aurelio García.

“We believe the destiny of Brazil is closely linked to the destiny of the region where we still have a complicated problem which is too many poor people and a very unequal distribution”, said García, who is a history academic and has represented President Lula da Silva in several regional conflicts.

Mr. García said that President Lula da Silva’s foreign policy towards Latinamerica has been above all to defend national interests but also “pursue with great insistence regional integration”.

“Which has been the intelligence of President Lula da Silva?” asks García. He’s not a great theory man, but “he understood that Latinamerica has deep differences and he has worked hard to establish a good relation with all countries and insisted that we must see beyond our differences”.

In this line of thinking García said it would be good if the new United States administration understood the signals from Latinamerican countries, of all political sensitivities, that consider “dialogue with Cuba as most important for the region”.

García added the issue would probably crop up during the Americas Summit in Trinidad Tobago, on April 17, 19, even when it’s not one of the main points of the agenda.

“The issue of Cuba is going to emerge because there’s a general feeling in Latinamerica that the embargo at this stage is senseless; it belongs to the Cold War agenda”.

“In Brazil we believe that normalization of relations with Cuba would have an extraordinary effect on the image of the United States. Even when the first steps must be unilateral, with no conditions or strings”, insisted García.

Lula da Silva’s advisor said that if necessary Brazil could act as a mediator, as long as both sides so request it, “which has not happened”.

Nevertheless the main issue at the Americas summit, which will be attended by US president Barcak Obama, is the crisis, said García. “There are some countries in the area that are suffering particularly hard because of the dramatic fall in US imports and remittances”.

Regarding Brazilian relations with Ecuador and Bolivia, García said those differences “have been solved in an amicable way” and hopefully with Paraguay and “a civilized dialogue we will reach an acceptable consensus”.

Ecuador and Bolivia nationalized Brazilian corporations assets and Paraguay is demanding a fair price for the electricity generated by the shared Itaipù dam, South America’s largest.