Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing this week to discuss trade and Ukraine mediation, having recovered from the pneumonia that forced him to postpone the trip.
Lula, 77, also hopes to reclaim Brazil’s role on the geopolitical stage following a period of isolation under his controversial predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Expected to arrive in China on Tuesday, Lula, who was originally due to visit Beijing late last month, is to meet Xi on Friday.
Photo: AFP
They “will talk about the war in Ukraine,” Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mauro Vieira told reporters.
Lula has said he hopes to promote his proposal for mediated talks to end Russia’s invasion of the country.
By the time Lula returns home, there should exist a group of mediator countries, Vieira said.
Lula, who served two terms as Brazilian president from 2003 to 2010, is keen to position the South American giant as a go-between, as he did at the end of his previous term, during negotiations for a nuclear treaty between the US and Iran.
However, Lula has refused to join Western nations in sending weapons to Ukraine to help in its defense.
On Thursday, while Lula said that “Putin cannot keep Ukrainian territory,” he qualified that statement by insisting that Zelenskiy “cannot want everything.”
He also suggested that Kyiv renounce its claim to Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian territory annexed by Moscow in 2014, words that did not endear Lula to authorities in Ukraine.
“Any mediation efforts to restore peace must be based on respect for the sovereignty and full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Charter,” Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko wrote on Twitter.
China, for its part, has proposed a 12-step resolution to the conflict, based on a ceasefire and dialogue, a plan Xi discussed with Putin during a visit to Moscow last month.
“Those are basic conditions” for peace, Vieira said, adding that Beijing’s proposal is “very positive.”
In a joint statement on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Beijing last week, Xi pledged “to support any effort in favor of a return to peace in Ukraine.”
However, officials in Moscow have rejected any “political solution” to the conflict.
After Lula’s chief adviser, Celso Amorim, met Putin in Russia last month, the Brazilian diplomat told CNN it would be an “exaggeration” to say that the doors were open for a negotiated peace.
More than three months into his third term as president, Lula is making his third major foreign trip, having previously visited Argentina and the US.
China is Brazil’s largest trading partner and key to Lula’s ambitions to re-establish the South American giant on the global geopolitical stage.
Officials in Beijing also consider Brazil — a leader in the global south — as a linchpin in their strategic and economic plans.
Lula’s original trip was due to put trade at its core, an important topic even if the focus has shifted. Last week, ahead of his arrival, China hosted a forum for 500 Brazilian and Chinese business people that resulted in the signing of more than 20 cooperation agreements.
One of those allows business transactions between the two countries to be carried out in Brazilian and Chinese currency rather than US dollars.
Bilateral trade between the two countries reached a record of more than US$150 billion last year.
Brazil was also the main destination for Chinese investment in Latin America from 2007 to 2020, worth US$70 billion, according to the Brazil-China Business Council.
However, this trip is expected to be primarily political.
Lula also plans to travel to Shanghai, where his political ally and former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, who succeeded him in 2011, heads the New Development Bank.
Lula is scheduled to visit the United Arab Emirates on his return trip to Brazil.
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