POLITICS-BRAZIL: Lula Sends Warning Signals to FTAA

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 2 (IPS) - The government of Luiz Inácio ''Lula'' da Silva will stiffen Brazil's stance in the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), to judge by the new make-up of the foreign ministry.

Brazil's new deputy foreign minister, Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, is a sworn enemy of the continent-wide free trade zone.

In April 2001, Pinheiro Guimaraes' outspoken criticism of the Americas-wide free trade agreement led then-foreign minister Celso Lafer to remove him from his post as director of the International Relations Research Institute.

The new foreign minister, Celso Amorim, took diplomatic circles by surprise when he announced that Pinheiro Guimaraes would be his number two, during the ceremony in which he was sworn in as minister late Wednesday in Brasilia.

Lafer did not even stay to receive the customary greetings as outgoing minister, after hearing his successor's decision to bring Pinheiro Guimaraes on board.

Over the past two years, Pinheiro Guimaraes has become one of the foremost Brazilian mouthpieces of the anti-FTAA movement, expressing his views and arguments in numerous interviews and articles.

He was a leading figure at the last World Social Forum, a sort of counterpoint to the World Economic Forum that draws thousands of social activists and members of leftist parties to the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in January every year.

The FTAA will amount to a kind of ''annexation'' of the countries of Latin America by the United States that will bring a loss of national sovereignty and even larger obstacles standing in the way of initiatives aimed at national development, according to Pinheiro Guimaraes.

That was the position shared by the leftist Workers' Party (PT) prior to the election campaign that led its leader, Lula, to his landslide victory in the October presidential elections.

Caravans of cars and buses from all over this South American country of 170 million converged on Brasilia to attend Lula's swearing-in ceremony Wednesday. The capital turned into a huge celebration, where red, the colour of the PT, was the predominant tone.

''Lula is us in the government'' was the view shared by peasants, workers and unemployed people who flocked from all over Brazil to welcome the former steelworker who made it to the presidency after three frustrated attempts since 1989.

Many crossed the country by bicycle and horseback to join the 200,000 people who according to the organisers of the celebration massed Wednesday in Brasilia to cheer the new president.

Francisco das Chagas Souza, a bus driver, was one of the cyclists. It took him 27 days to bike 2,150 kms from San Luis, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhao, to Brasilia, while Ronaldo Alves pedalled 1,800 kms, and Marcos Soares Fernandes 1,300 kms, to see Lula.

Antonio Francisco dos Santos, a retired photographer, walked 1,100 kms from the southern city of Campinas. The trek took him two months.

A delegation made up of 39 of Lula's relatives and other local residents of Caetés, where the new president was born in the impoverished northeast, received a special applause. It took the group 30 hours by bus to traverse the 2,100 kms separating their town from Brasilia.

From now on, Jan 1, the anniversary of the Cuban revolution, will also be the anniversary of the inauguration of Lula's government, said Cuban President Fidel Castro, underlining the significance of the event for Latin America.

Lula's foreign minister, Amorim, is a diplomat identified with the Brazilian left who staunchly defended the nation's interests as the country's representative in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, before he was named ambassador to London last year.

The most controversial battle he waged in the WTO was the dispute with Canada arising from mutual accusations of government subsidies in the financing of exports of aircraft by the Brazilian Aeronautics Company and Canada's Bombardier.

The government headed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso until Wednesday chalked up a partial victory when it won the right to take greater reprisals than Canada.

Amorim was also the trade negotiator in the first few years of the Mercosur -- the Southern Common Market trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Lula and Amorim said Wednesday that the Mercosur and South American integration would be the new government's top priorities, although they stressed that Brazil's foreign policy will not only concentrate on a single region or group of countries.

Brazil will negotiate its participation in the FTAA ''without prejudices,'' said Amorim, who pointed out that Pinheiro Guimaraes, with whom he has worked closely in the past, will implement the policies defined by the president and the minister above and beyond his own personal views.

Brazil will seek ''mature relations'' with the United States based on ''reciprocal interest and mutual respect,'' said Lula. It will also forge closer ties with the leading emerging economies like China, India, Russia and South Africa, he added.

The foreign policy announced by Lula and Amorim, which will defend ''the democratisation of international relations,'' the strengthening of ''multilateralism,'' and the expansion of the United Nations Security Council, is basically in line with that followed by the Cardoso administration.

But the new government is expected to put a greater emphasis on defending national interests, to judge by Lula's announcement that he will promote the development of Brazil based on the strengthening of the internal market.

''Our foreign policy will reflect the longing for change expressed at the polls,'' and ''will be, first and foremost, an instrument of national development,'' said Lula.

The president condemned ''the scandalous farm subsidies of developed countries,'' and noted that the multilateral trade talks are not only focusing on the slashing of import duties but on the many rules that affect developing countries.

Lula and the PT are a source of encouragement and an example to be followed by the left and progressive movements in many countries, especially Argentina, which remains in the grip of a grave economic, political and social crisis.

But not only the left is upbeat about the new government. In a survey carried out in Sao Paulo, Brazil's richest state, 77 percent of industrialists interviewed said they expected the performance of Lula's government to be ''good'' or ''excellent''.

That confidence is based on the government's plan to forge a ''national pact'' aimed at economic growth, inspired by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's (1932-1945) New Deal.

Most of Lula's cabinet ministers belong to the PT, but his economic team is dominated by business leaders, reflecting the ''alliance between capital and labour.'' (END/2003)