Yara Aquino and Renata Giraldi      Reporters Agência Brasil

Brasília – Following his doctors recommendations, Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, decided to postpone a trip that would take him to Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba.

Chavez, the first head of state to visit the new president of Brazil, was scheduled to arrive in Brasilia today. His meetings with president Dilma Rousseff were to review a wide range of bilateral, international and regional issues. It should be noted that bilateral trade between the two countries reached $4.6 billion in 2010.

Even though Chavez is not coming, the Brazilian foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, will meet with the Venezuelan foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, today in Brasilia. The two ministers hold discussions with the objective of preparing for a future visit by president Chavez (a date was not announced but it is believed that Chavez will come to Brazil soon).

According to the Venezuelan state-run news agency, “AVN” the visit was to be transmitted live on radio and television to Venezuela. AVN also reported that Chavez wants to maintain the same close bilateral relations that existed during the Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva administration. The president of Venezuela is known to have posted twitter messages praising the competence of Dilma Rousseff and declaring that she was his candidate in the October 2010 Brazilian presidential elections.

Dilma and Chavez were to hold talks on United Nations reform, with emphasis on their desire for new seating arrangements in the Security Council. In fact, Chavez was scheduled to declare his support for a permanent seat on the council for Brazil in the joint declaration the two presidents were to release at the end of the visit.

Dilma and Chavez were also scheduled to discuss the construction of an oil refinery in the state of Pernambuco (“Refinaria Abreu e Lima”), which is a joint Brazil-Venezuela project. It seems that so far only the Brazilian state-run oil company, Petrobras, has put money into the project and the Venezuelan state-run oil company, PDVSA, is supposed to ante up $400 million so the work can be concluded.

The Dilma - Chavez agenda also included talks on energy, housing and highways.

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English

Link - Hugo Chávez suspende visita ao Brasil por causa de lesão no joelho

Link - Visita de Chávez a Brasília no dia 10 servirá para reafirmar as relações entre Venezuela e Brasil

Link - Em comunicado conjunto, Dilma e Chávez deverão formalizar defesa pela reforma do Conselho de Segurança