BRASILIA, 19 April 2005 — A major Arab-Latin summit meeting is to take place in Brazil on May 10 and 11. President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil deserves the credit for taking the initiative for hosting the first-ever conference to bring together the leaders of Latin America and the Arab world.
In a recent speech, Minister of External Relations Celso Amorim said: “In Brazil we are experiencing a new awakening toward the Arab world, inspired by strong links forged by history and culture. Not all of you may be aware of the fact that more than 10 million Brazilians trace their ancestry to the Middle East. We have the largest community of people of Arab descent outside the Arab world. They made and continue to make a decisive contribution to the development of our society.” Today, the Brazilian people hope to establish a strong friendship between these countries and Brazil, and also the foundations for a new business and economic relations that will be mutually rewarding for Brazil and for all the Arab countries of the Middle East and Africa.
According to the government, the Summit of South American - Arab Countries is an innovative initiative. “It is the first international meeting in recent history that seeks to bring together two non-contiguous world regions, both of them of continental dimensions, outside of the regular UN work program. It is fundamentally a proposal for South-South bi-regional cooperation. We view this initiative as a new, constructive and complementary effort to ongoing integration processes. It is not meant to confront or oppose any other country or region.”
The summit has many objectives. The most important is a reciprocal re-discovery of two regions with historical affinities and a vast but yet unfulfilled potential in the field of bilateral relations. Looking to the past, the contact points between the two worlds date back to the Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula. Human ties between both regions have grown more intense over the past century through migration flows toward South America, which have made a valuable contribution to the social and cultural development of an important number of countries in the region. Today there are over 10 million people of Arab descent live only in Brazil, not to mention the many South American migrants, particularly Brazilians, that have recently gone the opposite way in search of a new life in the Middle East.
Looking to the future, what we aim at is a partnership between two regions that face similar challenges in the struggle for development. The obvious diversity of their national situations, identities and levels of development do not prevent them from sharing common goals and interests. Countries from both regions share a common vision of peace and economic development with social justice, they base their actions on the respect for international law and multilateralism, they fight for an inclusive, tolerant, multipolar world more conducive to development.
The summit will be preceded by a meeting of foreign ministers on May 9 and a meeting of high officials on May 8.
The purpose of the meeting is to enhance mutual knowledge and boost business and investments between the regions. The meeting in Brasilia will provide an unprecedented opportunity to establish a new network of economic and commercial players from both regions.
(Ricardo C. Amaral, [email protected], is a Brazilian author and economist.)
