MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama and Rousseff address world crises and pledge new talks before G20 meeting

The two presidents at the inauguration of the Open Government Partnership program

The world crisis was the main issue addressed by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff during the bilateral meetings with US President Barack Obama and later with her peer Mexico’s Felipe Calderon in New York.

According to Brazilian Foreign Affairs minister Antonio Patriota, Tuesday’s discussions between Ms Rousseff and Obama were “extremely friendly” and among other issues gave special relevance to concerns about the world economy crisis, particularly the situation in Europe.

“In the meeting both leaders agreed to keep discussing about the crisis ahead of the G20 meeting (of the world’s 20 leading economies) next November in France”, said Patriota.

The two leaders also agreed that the scheduled meeting this week in Washington between Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Brazilian Finance minister Guido Mantega will be of great significance since the two countries are working together with basically the same emphasis in the solutions to the crises.

Geithner and Mantega will be meeting on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank assemblies that will take place this week in the US capital.

Patriota said that President Rousseff also mentioned the need to reduce the misbalance in bilateral trade with the US since most Brazilian exports are commodities and those from the US industrialized goods with a greater input of added value. The Brazilian president also praised Obama’s job creation initiative announced earlier.

President Rousseff accepted Obama’s invitation to visit the US at the beginning of 2012, a task for both countries’ diplomacies to agree on dates and agenda.

In the following meeting with Mexico’s Calderon, Dilma said that Latin America needs to defend itself so that the advances achieved by the region in these last years are not corroded by the crises.

Calderon on his side talked of Mexico’s interest in increasing bilateral trade with Brazil in a major effort to diversify its foreign trade and the origin of the country’s main imports now basically concentrated in United States.

The meetings took place the same day the three presidents participated in the launching of the Open Government Partnership forum which is co-chaired by Brazil and the US.

On the official launching of the initiative, with UN support, the Brazilian president said that the use of digital networks is essential for the improvement of government services. “These networks are an important instrument for our upper most objective of strengthening democracy”, underlined Dilma.

President Obama called on emerging and established democracies to make their governments more transparent by getting citizens involved and using new technologies to make information available.

Obama added that the US was putting its commitment into practice by pursuing new protections for whistleblowers, creating a new way for citizens to petition the White House online, and joining a global initiative in which oil, gas and mining companies disclose more information about how much they're paying to extract natural resources.

The Open Government Partnership happens at a moment when “emerging democracies in Latin America and in Asia are showing how innovation and transparency can make countries more prosperous and fair; in which a new generation in the Middle East and Northern Africa reinforces a long established truth: governments exist to the benefit to their peoples”

Dozens of other nations and civil society organizations are also involved, with the goal of finding new ways to engage citizens and allow them to hold governments responsible. The second meeting of the Open Government Transparency is scheduled to take place in Brazil next year.