US Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from the state of Minnesota defended Brazil’s entry as a permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council. He stated that this is his personal opinion, not the official position of the US government.
Coleman is chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and member of the Subcommittee on UN Reform.
In his view Brazil deserves a permanent UN Security Council seat on the basis of the country’s relevance and its increasingly significant international role.
Coleman affirmed that, for the UN to become a more relevant organization, it is in need of reform and greater capacity to intervene in political and humanitarian crises.
The Senator was in São Paulo, where he participated in the Brazil Against Piracy seminar.
Earlier this year at the close of an eight-day trip to Africa, the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, made a positive evaluation of the contacts made during his meetings.
Amorim considered significant the comments he heard about Brazil in the countries he visited. “I regard it as normal that Brazil, which, if it gains a seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council, will obviously be representing Latin America.”
“And Brazil will also pay special attention to African problems, as it always has, from a non-paternalistic perspective, but rather with the intention of cooperating without seeking immediate advantages in return,” the Minister said.
The Minister denied, however, that the purpose of the trip was to negotiate the support of African countries on behalf of Brazil’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and the candidacy of Brazilian Ambassador Luiz Felipe Seixas Correa as director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil