São Paulo – The Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, is going to make another visit to Egypt on the 27th and 28th this month. According to information from the Brazilian foreign office (Itamaraty), the objective is to follow up with high-level contacts that the governments of the two countries are maintaining. The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, visited Brasília (the Brazilian capital) in July and met with president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Trade and diplomatic relations between Brazil and Egypt have intensified in recent years. The North African country is the third largest destination for Brazilian exports in the Arab world, after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. From January to November, shipments to Egypt totalled more than US$ 1.3 billion, growth of 3.6% over the same period of 2008.
Egypt is one of the Arab nations that are negotiating a trade agreement with the Mercosur. Recently, during the last ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Egyptian minister of Industry and Trade, Rashid Mohamed Rashid, who travelled to Brazil last year, said that he expects the deal to be signed in 2010.
According to the Itamaraty, Amorim is going to address matters of common interest to the two countries, among them the conflicts in the Middle East.
Brazil wants to play a more active role in the mediation between Israelis and Palestinians, and in the last two months the country was visited by the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, and the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum