Leaders of the BRICS group of emerging powers were to hold a summit yesterday with South American presidents, bringing together nations seeking alternatives to US influence in the region.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were to hold talks in the Brazilian capital with counterparts from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and other Latin American nations.
The gathering follows a BRICS-only summit on Monday in the northeastern seaside city of Fortaleza, where the five nations agreed to create a development bank and a crisis reserve fund seen as rivals to Western-dominated financial institutions.
“It’s an opportunity for Brazil to show that it’s not just interested in the BRICS, but that it is betting on integration and what benefits the region,” said Oliver Stuenkel, foreign relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
For Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the meetings represent a new push by Beijing to gain clout in a region traditionally seen as a US backyard.
After yesterday’s talks, Xi is to spend one more day in Brazil to launch a China-Latin America forum with leftist leaders including Cuban President Raul Castro.
China’s massive purchases of commodities and manufactured goods exports to the resource-rich region have boosted its two-way trade with Latin America to a total of US$261.6 billion last year.
The meetings are also another opportunity for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to present himself to the world.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the talks give him a platform following his country’s exclusion from the G8 group of industrialized nations over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The BRICS group of emerging powers regrets the lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and crises in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Tuesday.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa “lament the lack of concrete progress in the majority of these situations,” she said at the summit in Fortaleza.
“We agreed that, in all of them, long-term solutions necessarily go through the path of dialogue, which depends on the commitment of all parties involved,” she said.
She said the five leaders back “constructive and cohesive involvement of the international community” to avoid “unilateral situations” that serve “specific countries but compromise negotiated situations of interest for the majority.”
Putin has been calling for a “multipolar” world amid tensions with the West over the Ukraine crisis.
The meetings give Putin his first international summit since being kicked out of the G8 group of industrialized nations over Ukraine.
The United States is threatening to impose new economic sanctions on Russia over accusations that it is backing pro-Moscow separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The BRICS leaders were to be joined yesterday in Brasilia by leftist firebrands including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa.
The new financial mechanisms created by the BRICS could benefit Argentina, which is at risk of defaulting on US$1.3 billion in debts after losing a US Supreme Court battle with hedge funds seen as “vultures” by Buenos Aires.
The New Development Bank, to be based in Shanghai, is to have capital of US$50 billion that could rise to US$100 billion to fund infrastructure projects, while the fund is to have US$100 billion at its disposal to weather economic storms.
However, it could take two years for the institutions to be operational because they have to ratified by the legislatures of each BRICS nation.
Rousseff left open the possibility of using the fund to help non-BRICS nations, saying the group would be willing to “examine” any request from Argentina.
“We are open to see what relationship [the fund] could have with countries outside the BRICS group, but it hasn’t been decided yet because we just formed this institution,” she said after Tuesday’s summit.
“If Argentina will benefit or not is something that we will have to examine ... [but] first Argentina must make a request,” she said. “Our view is that we would be generous to developing countries.”
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