| |
Lula Plans to Mend Honduras Ties
as Brazil Seeks Regional Clout
By Andre Soliani and Iuri Dantas
(Bloomberg) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva will seek to mend Latin America’s relations with
Honduras after leading the region in rejecting
U.S.-backed elections following a coup against
then-President Manuel Zelaya.
Lula will work with other Latin American nations this
week to return Honduras to the Organization of American
States, which expelled the country after the overthrow
of Zelaya in June, according to a person helping plan
Lula’s agenda who can’t be identified because the
information is private. Lula will also negotiate loans
of more than $1.2 billion for Cuba, El Salvador and
Mexico and may announce a $2.5 billion investment in
Mexico by Braskem SA and Idesa SA, spokesman Marcelo
Baumbach said.
Lula, 64, wants to extend Brazil’s influence from South
America to the U.S. border before he steps down Dec. 31.
His week-long trip is part of a diplomatic effort to
leverage Brazil’s growing political and economic
stability to play a bigger role in the world, said Eric
Farnsworth, vice president of the New York-based
research group Council of the Americas.
“Brazil is committing to an increased level of
development assistance and assistance for building trade
capacity and infrastructure in the region, and these
things carry a lot of weight,” Farnsworth said in a
phone interview. “Traditionally Brazil has not played
any role of any consequence in Central America, Mexico
or the Caribbean.”
Regional Unity
As part of his legacy, Lula, who is barred from
seeking a third consecutive term, wants to give an
initial push toward the creation of an organization
uniting all the Latin American and Caribbean economies.
Such a bloc would have an economy of $4.3 trillion,
about the same size as China’s, according to the World
Bank.
“The Brazilian government focused first on the
integration of South America, our closest neighbors,”
Marco Aurelio Garcia, Lula’s special adviser for foreign
affairs, said in a phone interview from Brasilia. “The
success of this project led other Latin American and
Caribbean countries to seek to join the process of
regional integration.”
For Latin America’s biggest economy, a foothold in
Central America and the Caribbean may become a
trampoline for Brazilian companies to circumvent higher
U.S. tariffs on the country’s exports of ethanol,
textiles, beef, orange juice and sugar, Celio Porto,
secretary of international affairs at the Brazilian
agriculture ministry, said in an interview.
U.S. Market Access
Brazilian companies need to build plants in
countries with free trade agreements with the U.S. to
avoid paying import tariffs, Porto said. The government
wants to persuade textile producers to move to Haiti,
where they can use raw cotton from Brazil to export to
the world’s biggest market, Porto said.
The U.S. has free trade agreements with Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and
Nicaragua. Most Haitian exports to the U.S. are
duty-free under the Caribbean Basin Initiative.
In December 2008, Lula organized the first Latin
American and Caribbean summit, excluding the U.S. and
all European nations from the gathering. The group will
convene again today and tomorrow in Cancun, Mexico.
Lula will then travel to Cuba, where he plans to meet
former president Fidel Castro and visit an $800 million
venture by Construtora Norberto Odebrecht SA to build
the Caribbean’s largest container terminal.
Odebrecht, partly financed by the Brazilian state
development bank BNDES, plans to spend four years
upgrading Cuba’s Mariel port to handle 1 million
containers per year, the Rio de Janeiro-based company
said in an e-mailed statement.
Cuba Loans
BNDES, also based in Rio de Janeiro, may lend Cuba
an additional $530 million to help build the port. The
bank may lend up to $1.2 billion to Raul Castro’s
government through 2012, Baumbach said.
In El Salvador, Lula will meet president Mauricio Funes,
who is seeking a $300 million loan from BNDES to renew
the country’s bus fleet. Representatives of Caxias do
Sul, Brazil- based Marcopolo SA, the country’s biggest
bus maker, will meet with Salvadoran officials to offer
plans to update the transport system.
Sao Paulo-based Braskem may inaugurate a $2.5 billion
investment in Mexico this week to help boost production
of plastic resins, Baumbach said. Mexico also wants a
$377 million loan to help build a power plant and
irrigation project in Michoacan state.
Getting Past Honduras
To increase Brazil’s influence in the region, Lula
needs to “move away” from the Honduran crisis,
Farnsworth said. Zelaya returned from exile after the
coup and took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in
Tegucigalpa. He stayed there until Jan. 27, the day
Porfirio Lobo was inaugurated to succeed Zelaya and
interim President Roberto Micheletti.
Brazil has refused to recognize Lobo’s election, saying
last November’s vote was carried out by an illegitimate
government and that it needs “concrete gestures” from
the new administration, presidential adviser Marco
Garcia said yesterday. The U.S., Dominican Republic, El
Salvador and Costa Rica recognize Lobo as the rightful
president of Honduras.
“Lula will talk with the Central American and Caribbean
countries to reach a joint decision,” Aurelio Garcia
said. “We can’t be more Honduran than Hondurans or more
Zelayist than Zelaya.” |
| |
|
|
|
