São Paulo – The Brazilian vice-president, Michel Temer, should include visits to Arab countries in his schedule, aiming to establish closer ties between the federal government and the region. The invitation to travel to the Arab countries was made by the president of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Salim Taufic Schahin, who met with Temer this week in Brasília, the capital of Brazil.
The vice-president is of Lebanese descent, and the presence of Arab immigrants in Brazil was among the topics of the meeting with Schahin, who is of Syrian and Lebanese origin. Salim told Temer that the Arab world is usually welcoming towards the Brazilian government and people in general, and should receive a descendant even better.
The goal of the meeting was to discuss the continuation of the policy for establishing closer ties with Middle Eastern and North African countries, implemented by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by the current president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff. “I spoke to him about the importance of proceeding with this effort,” Schahin told ANBA.
According to Schahin, Temer expressed his willingness to follow through with the expansion of Brazilian relations with the region and concurred with several of the Arab Brazilian Chamber president’s points of view regarding the Arab world.
Temer, whose full name is Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia is from the interior of the state of São Paulo and his family came from Lebanon to Brazil in 1925. He holds a degree in Law, and prior to being the vice-president, he has been a federal congressman and the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies, the latter position of which he occupied for the last time in 2009.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
