Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva invited the other South American heads of state to a meeting to be held in Brasilia on May 30 to promote regional integration, official sources reported Thursday.
The objective of the meeting is to promote dialogue between all the countries of the region, with a view to reactivating the South American cooperation agenda in key areas such as health, climate change, defense, the fight against transnational crime, infrastructure and energy, among others, according to a statement from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.
“It is imperative that we once again see South America as a region of peace and cooperation, capable of generating concrete initiatives to face the challenge, which we all share and aspire to, of sustainable development with social justice.”, affirmed Lula in the message transmitted to his peers.
The statement does not mention the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), a bloc to which Brazil announced its formal reintegration last April.
Unasur was founded in 2008, promoted by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and by Lula himself, but the bloc entered a crisis in 2017 due to disagreements between the countries of the region.
As of 2018, half of the members of Unasur suspended their participation in the cascade block, alleging that this forum was politicized and only served as a sounding board for the Venezuelan government headed by Nicolás Maduro.
The only countries that remained in Unasur were Guyana, Suriname, Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru, with which the forum was deactivated in practice.
Like Brazil, Argentina announced last month that it will once again participate in Unasur.
Last March, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, told EFE that his country wants to relaunch Unasur “with new bases”, which arise from the “dialogue with member countries”.
Since he assumed the Presidency of Brazil on January 1, Lula has been determined to reactivate regional integration and has reinserted Brazil in Unasur and in the Community of Latin American States.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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