Brazil's Lula: 'Another world possible'

www.upi.com By Carmen Gentile UPI Latin America Correspondent From the International Desk Published 1/23/2003 6:03 PM

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Brazil's president -- scheduled to attend both the World Social and Economic forums -- is to plead with world leaders on both opening days to see "that another world is possible," referring to his desire to close the gap between nations' rich and poor and an effort to eradicate hunger at home.

He will take that message to both forums, which he will attend during their respective six-day runs.

"It is inexcusable that at the beginning of the millennium there are still millions of human beings that don't have enough to eat," Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday, a day before he is scheduled to address an estimated 100,000 participants at the World Social Forum.

Though this year's event marks the third time anti-globalization delegates have will have met in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, Lula would be the first world leader to address the event.

Later this week, the Brazilian leader is also scheduled to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

According to Brazilian officials, Lula is expected to make the same address to both groups, emphasizing the need for world leaders to listen to counterpoints to globalization made by Porto Alegre participants, while pushing his message that "rich countries need to distribute the income across the planet."

"After participating for the third time in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, I am going to Davos to show that another world is possible," he said. "In the same manner that a new social contract is necessary in Brazil, we need a world pact that diminishes the gap between rich countries and poor countries."

Lula -- a leftist who defeated his predecessor's moderate, handpicked successor -- has been steadily pushing Brazilian social reforms efforts, such as Zero Hunger, since his Jan. 1 inauguration.

The initiative was the first edict acted on by the fledging Lula administration and has been criticized by some officials -- even members of his own Workers' Party -- for being too large in scale, ill-managed and at too great a price.

It has, however, received international praise and contributions from the Inter-American Development Bank to the tune of $12 billion and a promise by the United States of between $6 billion to $10 billion over the next three years.

The latter could fall into jeopardy if Brazil doesn't get on board the U.S.-led effort to create a hemispheric free trade bloc known as Free Trade of the Americas.

Brazilian and U.S. officials are expected to discuss aspects of the proposed trade bloc to assess whether two of the hemisphere's leading economies can set the stage for further talks on the FTAA.

Entering a critical phase of negotiations later this year, the FTAA would attempt to eliminate barriers to trade and investment among 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere by 2005.

Since well before his October landslide victory, Lula has ardently opposed the FTAA, calling it "annexation politics" and has sworn that Brazil "won't be enclosed" by it.

He has called for Brazil to take a more aggressive stance in the upcoming negotiations and has said that the country would "not accept American impositions on trade."

Lula's address to both forums will reportedly touch on this notion, though maintain a tone of ambiguity in not directing a message specifically to the United States, which he hopes would drop trade barriers and tariffs on certain Brazilian goods before the Latin American nation embraces membership in the FTAA.

"I think that Brazil, today, can carry a new message for the world about the process of globalization and, on the plane of social exclusion, its consequences, which are very powerful in many developing countries," said Antonio Palocci, Brazil's minister of finance and Lula's economic confidant.