Guadalajara (Mexico) - President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's participation at the III Latin America and Caribbean/European Union Summit was marked by eight bilateral meetings with leaders from Europe and Latin America. The chief items on the agenda were the formation of the free trade area between the Mercosur and the European Union and political mobilization for the campaign against hunger.

Lula invited all of them to participate in a meeting he is proposing for September 20, the day before the opening of the UN General Assembly, to discuss the creation of an international fund to combat poverty. He asked the head of the Spanish government, José Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero, to join the nucleus of countries "engaged" in the fight against hunger. Brazil, Chile, and France are already members of this group.

"In the case of France, it is important to note that there is a difference between the Mercosur-European Union agreement - in which the agricultural part is limited to access to markets and in the majority of cases will be in terms of quotas for agricultural products - and the discussions involving the World Trade Organization (WTO), in which the question of subsidies is more important," explained the Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim.

"President Chirac recalled that other great powers also give subsidies. As far as this goes, we fully agree," Minister Amorim commented.

According to Amorim, the President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, expressed his intention to become more permanently associated with the Mercosur, in political forums likewise. "Association with the Mercosur presupposes the existence of a free trade agreement," Amorim pointed out. A binational commission between Brazil and Mexico will be created this year to give a new stimulus to cooperation, in the technological sphere as well.

Investments in Brazilian infrastructure were also a topic of President Lula's conversations with the other leaders. Lula met with José Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain; Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission; Jacques Chirac, President of France; Gerhard Schröder, Federal Chancellor of Germany; Nicanor Duarte Frutos, President of Paraguay; Carlos Mesa, President of Bolivia; and Oscar Berger, President of Guatemala.

Reporter: Edla Lula
Translator: David Silberstein