President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) offered this Sunday (26) to act as an interlocutor in the crisis between the United States and Venezuela, amid the escalation of tensions in the region.
The PT member’s proposal was informed to the press by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauro Vieira, after the meeting the president had with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.
“President Lula raised the issue, said that South America is a region of peace. And he offered to be a contact, an interlocutor, as he has been in the past, with Venezuela to seek solutions that are mutually acceptable and correct between the two countries”, declared Vieira.
The Brazilian president’s initiative comes at a time of growing geopolitical tension in the region.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has sent naval, air and land forces to the Caribbean, where on Friday it announced the deployment of the largest aircraft carrier in its fleet, as part of a new phase of its anti-drug campaign.
The White House justified the bombings of a dozen vessels in the area as actions against drug trafficking routes that supply the United States.
On the Caracas side, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro denounced that the American military reinforcement aims to destabilize his government.
Lula and Trump’s meeting lasted around 45 minutes. The meeting had a main objective for the Brazilian Foreign Ministry: to make the American government retreat from the 50% customs tariffs imposed on national products.
Earlier, the executive secretary of the Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services, Márcio Rosa, one of those present at the meeting, confirmed that former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro, convicted of leading an alleged coup plot and an ally of Trump while president of Brazil, was also on the agenda of the meeting in Asia.
According to what Lula published on social media, both agreed to “immediately” begin negotiations to resolve tensions arising from the 50% tariff imposed by Washington on Brazilian products.
Still according to Vieira, both diplomacies could talk again this Sunday, also in Malaysia.
