The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, received this Monday his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, with whom he discussed, among other matters, possible joint measures to improve the protection of the Amazon region.
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The defense of the environment has been one of the banners of the campaign that brought the new Brazilian president to power, who has promised to reestablish measures to combat deforestation in the Amazon abandoned by the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
“A great pact to save the Amazon jungle in favor of humanity“Petro wrote on his Twitter account, after his meeting with Lula, at whose inauguration he was present this Sunday.
Lula has also advanced that he plans call a summit with the presidents of the eleven countries that share the largest plant lung on the planetwhich would be held during the first half of this year in a city in the Brazilian Amazon.
(See: Lula assumes in Brazil: the economy and 3 other challenges that he will have to face).
In his message, Petro added that during his meeting with Lula he had also discussed a “study of the electrical interconnection of the Americas with clean energy sources.” He also valued the new position of the Lula government towards the region and the fact that there is now “a Brazil guarantor of peace in Colombia.”
Lula received the Colombian president in the company of the new Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, and former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who will be a kind of adviser to the president on foreign affairs.
Petro was one of the twenty heads of state and government who attended the inauguration of Lula this Sunday, who has announced that will invigorate Brazil’s foreign policywhich he considered abandoned during the administration of the far-right Bolsonaro, especially in relation to Latin America.
Lula has anticipated that what he describes as Brazil’s “return to the world” will involve revitalizing Latin American integration, with Mercosur as the starting point and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) as regional plugins.
(Keep reading: The best moments of Lula da Silva’s tenure in Brazil.)
The new Brazilian president has dedicated this first day in power to diplomacy and has had two bilateral meetings with many of the leaders who traveled to Brasilia. In addition to Petro, he has received, among others, the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and the presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernández; Bolivia, Luis Arce; and Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso.
EFE
