Isaura Daniel*
isaura.daniel@anba.com.br
São Paulo – Brazil will have a new ambassador in Palestine. The diplomat Ligia Maria Scherer will be the next head of the Brazilian representative office in Ramallah. She should take office around the month of October. "Anything that can be done to strengthen the relations between Brazil and Palestine, will be done," said Ligia in an interview to ANBA last Friday (17), when she visited the headquarters of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, in the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo, for a meeting with the heads at the organisation.
During the meeting, the president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber, Antonio Sarkis Jr., said that the organisation was at her disposal to help promote relations between the two countries in the fields of trade and tourism. The subjects discussed included the prospects for sectors such as olive oil, olives, yellow granites, and religious handicraft, which are produced in Palestine. Also attending the meeting were the foreign trade vice-president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Salim Schahin, the director Bechara Ibrahim, and the secretary-general, Michel Alaby.
The ambassador had a closer look at the activities of the Arab Brazilian Chamber, which for 55 years since its foundation has been working to promote relations between the Arab world and Brazil. Sarkis spoke of the commercial actions that the Chamber develops, and of the importance of cultural initiatives for bringing people from the two countries closer together. Ligia received from Sarkis a version of the Koran translated by the foreign relations vice-president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber, Helmi Nasr, and an Arabic-Portuguese dictionary, also by Nasr, a DVD on the presence of Arabs in Brazil, and an homage plaque.
Presently, Ligia works at the Permanent Representation of Brazil to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in Rome, where she is the minister counsellor. The representative office in Palestine will be the first that she assumes as an ambassador. In her diplomatic career, Ligia also worked in Brazilian embassies to Rome, Tokyo, Washington, and Israel. Furthermore, she worked in the mission of the Brazilian government to the European Union, in Brussels, Belgium.
Approximately 3.8 million people are currently living in Palestine. The local Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is US$ 4.7 billion. The country is a member of the League of Arab States and is located in the East Coast of the Mediterranean Sea, to the west of Jordan and south of Lebanon. Agriculture accounts for one third of the Palestinian economy, and employs around 12% of the local economically active population. The main trade partners of the country in the region are the European Union and the Asian countries. The official language of Palestine is the Arabic, and the commercial language is English.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
