BRAZIL-CUBA: More Cooperation and Trade, Less Politics

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 26 2003 (IPS) - Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is putting the emphasis on cooperation and trade in his visit to Cuba, arriving Friday with few political commitments on the two-day agenda.

Lula, of the leftist Workers Party (PT), was greeted at noon at the airport with an embrace from Cuban President Fidel Castro, although the official reception was scheduled for three hours later at the Palace of the Revolution, the government headquarters.

Castro, in his usual olive-drab uniform, and Lula, wearing a dark suit, made the 15-minute ride to the residence of the Brazilian ambassador, Tilden de Santiago, in the Cuban president’s Mercedes Benz, beginning their “agenda-free” conversations.

Although there was no press conference at the airport, Lula had stated some of his positions on socialist-run Cuba before leaving Mexico, another stop on his tour that began with his attendance at the United Nations General Assembly.

“I do not issue opinions on the internal political conditions of other nations,” he told the press in Mexico City, though he did go so far to say that the U.S. embargo against Cuba is “inhuman”.

The Brazilian president’s words suggest there is little chance that he will meet with members of the political opposition in Cuba, who Castro has referred to as “mercenaries in the hire of the empire (United States).”

Cuban officials value any country’s condemnation of the four-decade U.S. embargo, which they calculate has cost the island some 72 billion dollars.

Lula took office on Jan. 1, and in April Brazil abstained from the vote on the resolution regarding Cuba at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which is another important scenario for the Castro government’s foreign policy.

The motion called for Havana to receive a special representative of the U..N. High Commissioner for Human Rights with the mission to report on the status of Cuba’s recognition of its citizens’ human, civil and political rights.

The Castro government had made it clear beforehand that it would not receive the U.N. representative.

“A meeting with Lula would be a gesture of solidarity that we would greatly appreciate,” but if he opts for a more discreet move in favour of human rights in Cuba, that might even be preferable, Vladimir Roca, a dissident with the group ‘Todos Unidos’ (Everyone United), told IPS.

In the opinion of Dimas Castillo, of the opposition Democratic Socialist Current, the Brazilian president “evidently wants to avoid causing tensions with the Cuban government,” which generally reacts with irritation when foreign visitors meet with the island’s dissidents.

Members of ‘Arco Progresista’, an umbrella group of social-democratic leanings, said they respect the “historic and strategic” factors in play if Lula decides against meeting with dissidents here, referring to Brazil’s leadership role in the region and its participation in mediation efforts to defuse political tensions in Venezuela.

Lula’s entourage includes several ministers (foreign relations, finance, health, development, food security), as well as more than 50 Brazilian business leaders, who will take part Saturday in a forum with their Cuban counterparts.

The visiting president is expected to address the forum, but before that he will meet with Castro at the Palace of the Revolution to sign several agreements aimed at strengthening bilateral trade, which in 2002 moved some 90 million dollars, according to Brazilian figures.

The Cuban industries that most interest Brazil are biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, which have seen rapid development in recent years, as well as tourism, sugar, fishing and petroleum.

Among the potential accords is a 400-million-dollar credit line for Cuba, from Brazilian banks, to be used for purchasing Brazilian products.

The current trade balance favours Brazil, which exports food, car parts and buses to the island, while it purchases nickel, cement, insecticides, vaccinations and tobacco from Cuba.

Brazilian ambassador Santiago said this week that the state-run oil companies Petrobrás, of Brazil, and Cupet, of Cuba, recently signed a letter of intention to engage in joint ventures.

Among the possibilities included in that text is the rehabilitation of the Cienfuegos refinery, in central Cuba, paralysed for the past decade.

Furthermore, Petrobrás could join Spanish and Canadian companies in exploring oil fields in Cuban territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico, and take part in updating the oil drilling operations on land.