Brasilia (BLAZETRENDS).- The Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, received this Monday with state honors his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, who is visiting Brasilia for the first time since 2015, on the occasion of the South American summit.
Although it is classified as a working visit, Maduro received certain State honors upon his arrival and was awaited by Lula at the top of a ramp that leads to the first floor of the Planalto Palace, where fifty soldiers in historical uniforms formed a welcoming hallway.
Lula invites more presidents
Lula has invited for this Tuesday the presidents of the other eleven South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela) for a regional summit and Maduro has been the first to arrive to Brasília.
As reported by the Brazilian government in an official note, Lula and Maduro will have a private meeting, which will later be joined by ministers from both governments, and beyond bilateral issues, they will also analyze “the process of internal dialogue in Venezuela, facing to the holding of elections in 2024”.
After that meeting, a joint statement to journalists and a lunch that the Brazilian president will offer to the Venezuelan delegation at the Foreign Ministry headquarters are scheduled.
Maduro and his absence
Maduro took advantage of the opportunity of the summit called by Lula for this Tuesday to make his first visit to Brasilia since 2015, when Dilma Rousseff was in government, who was dismissed in 2016 for alleged fiscal irregularities.
Rousseff was replaced by the conservative Michel Temer, who cooled relations with Venezuela and governed until January 2019, when the far-right Jair Bolsonaro took office, who went further, closing the Brazilian embassy in Caracas and prohibiting Maduro from entering Brazil by decree. .
That decree was revoked by Lula on January 1, when he assumed the Presidency and ordered the immediate resumption of relations with Venezuela at all levels.
