The head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, praised this Tuesday the speeches of the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, and the North American, Joe Biden, at the United Nations, in which he identified “an overlap that allows dialogue.”
Speaking to journalists at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that he had the opportunity to speak this Tuesday with the president of Ukraine and that Volodymyr Zelensky was “very happy” with the prospect of a meeting with Lula da Silva on Wednesday.
According to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who was this Tuesday the eighth head of state to speak at the opening of the general debate of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, opened the session with “a “great intervention” in which he spoke about the problems and priorities in a “very direct and very pedagogical” way.
“Then there were two great speeches,” he considered, referring to the interventions of the presidents of Brazil and the United States of America.
The President of the Republic described Lula da Silva’s speech as “very well written and very balanced” and “open to dialogue, also in the case of Ukraine”, and that of Joe Biden as “an example of diplomatic mastery”, in the one who “was naturally very emphatic and very determined” against the Russian invasion.
In his opinion, “two positions were really marked”, that of the North American president with a “clear and incisive pro-Ukrainian position”, and the president of Brazil with a “position of willingness to negotiate – today condemning the invasion – [terça-feira] did not condemn, but he had previously condemned, representing the rest of the world.
“They are not incompatible, there is dialogue between them. If you look closely, there is overlap. They are different positions, but there is an overlap that allows dialogue,” he defended.
Asked if Lula da Silva had not been more pro-Russian than neutral, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa responded that the President of Brazil “has had a very intelligent, own and autonomous line” and that “corresponds to the thinking of many countries.”
“And it is a position that I would consider well thought out, well presented and today very well constructed in terms of discourse,” he added.
When asked about the speech of the President of Ukraine, he replied: “I thought it was very good. It was very short, very strong. It raised fundamental issues.”
“When he finished there was much more applause than when he started, which means he achieved his goal,” he considered.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that he spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky about “the adaptation of a common initiative”, which he did not want to specify, “something more administrative”, without political or military relevance.
Source: TSF
