Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a swipe yesterday at the UN and other multilateral institutions, saying they “stopped working” and failed to protect Gaza’s war victims.
Lula was speaking after meeting Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, ahead of a major regional summit where the Brazilian leader would likely meet US President Donald Trump.
“Who can accept the genocide that has been going on in the Gaza Strip for so long?” Lula said.
Photo: AFP
“The multilateral institutions that were created to try to prevent these things from happening have stopped working. Today, the UN Security Council and the UN no longer function,” he said.
Lula also appeared to take a swipe at Trump, saying, “for a leader, walking with their head held high is more important than a Nobel Prize.”
Trump departed Washington on Friday for Asia and high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), but first, the US president is expected to witness the signing of a peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia today, which he — in part — helped to broker.
The White House lashed out this month at the Norwegian Nobel Committee after it awarded the peace prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and overlooked Trump.
Trump had repeatedly insisted that he deserved the peace prize for his role in resolving numerous conflicts — a claim observers said is broadly exaggerated.
Meanwhile, Trump and Lula have begun to patch up their differences after months of bad blood over the trial and conviction of Trump’s ally, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump has instituted a 50 percent tariff on many Brazilian products and imposed sanctions on several top officials to punish Brazil for what he said was a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced Bolsonaro last month to 27 years in prison for his role in a botched coup bid after his 2022 election loss to Lula.
Relations between Trump and Lula began to thaw when the two leaders had a brief meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month. They then spoke by phone on Oct. 6 and raised the possibility of meeting at the ASEAN summit.
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