U.S. Embassy Brasilia Press Conference

As Roberto mentioned, this idea -- actually, the original idea came from our two foreign ministers, Secretary Rice, Foreign Minister Amorim, who really were in a discussion, had the idea of building on what we see has been very good cooperation with regard to the U.S./Brazil biofuels partnership, and seeing that as an important element of our relationship and then wanting to deepen other elements of the economic relationship and recognizing that we have a significant opportunity to do this. The significant opportunity comes from the fact that we're the two largest economies in the hemisphere, really two global leaders on key economic issues globally. And one thing that I think is really important to recognize is that we face many of the same challenges in terms of globalization, in terms of economic competitiveness. And so the two foreign ministers thought it made sense and so we're here today with the first meeting. And again, we thought it was very constructive.

One element that I wanted to emphasize that I think is a reflection of the growing, deepening relationship between the United States and Brazil is the idea of not only working on bilateral issues, ways to deepen our bilateral economic relationship, but as was mentioned, looking at ways to cooperate with regard to third countries. And you see that we're doing this. We're doing it in the biofuels area. We're doing it here. President Lula and President Bush talked about doing this with regard to malaria in third countries, cooperating with regard to health issues. And I think it's a reflection of the deepening relationship between the United States and Brazil. And so it was an important component of what we talked about today in a number of these topics.

And finally, as Roberto mentioned, we view this as a catalyst. There are a lot of other agencies in the United States that play an important role here. And we even had a very senior Treasury Department colleague, our Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Brian O'Neill, who was with us during the whole meeting today. So we now coordinate, catalog, add to the catalyst many of these issues. And on some of these issues we actually do play the lead role so we can focus on those, as well.

So again, I think we want to thank, again, our Brazilian hosts for the hospitality. We had a great lunch here where we actually got a lot of work done, as well. And we found the inaugural meeting of our dialogue very worthwhile. I don't know if you want to add anything.

ASST. SEC. SULLIVAN: Very briefly I'd just like to add two points: First, this is the first of what we hope will be many meetings. As was noted by Roberto, we will be meeting again in Washington within six months, and we hope to have a regular schedule of meetings that will allow us to address issues identified already in the list that was given, but also new issues that we identify as these talks progress.

The second point I wanted to make is we had, I think, a very good discussion on social inclusion. And we want to make sure that as we advance this economic dialogue, as we advance our cooperation across all aspects of economic activity, that we understand that the purpose of economic growth, the purpose of wealth creation is to address social agendas in both of our countries and in the region. This means fighting poverty, fighting inequality, and fighting social exclusion. And the economy plays a terribly important role in creating social inclusion; in other words, in building citizenship that is understood in its fullest sense -- not only political citizenship, but also economic and social citizenship. And in this regard, we believe that this kind of economic partnership, this kind of economic dialogue will go a long way to helping us better understand the challenges that we face in the Americas today and participating in a positive way. And we're very thankful to Brazil and to Itamaraty for allowing us to participate in this fashion.

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

ASST. SEC. SHANNON: Regarding the first part of your question, we did not address current events in Latin America. We focused on the issues that were identified in terms of our economic relationships. As we look out over the region, there are two ways to understand this region: One is to try to identify problems or points of difference and focus on what divides the region. The other approach is to understand that there are many positive things happening in the region, many important things happening in the region, and also many points of conversions. This exercise is focusing on points of conversions and points of positive action. And that really was our focus today and it will be our focus as this exercise moves forward.

ASST. SEC. SULLIVAN: Let me just quickly answer your question with regard to specifics. I think one of the important things is, as you know, this is the first of what we hope, what we anticipate to be many meetings. So part of what we were doing was setting the agenda, looking, being very specific that we wanted this to be action oriented, and then asking our staffs with ensuring that in some of these topics -- in most of these topics, that we have good follow-up for our next meeting. So with regard to infrastructure, we actually had a very interesting discussion. Unfortunately, my colleague from the Treasury Department, Brian O'Neill, is not here because, from the U.S. side, he led that discussion. There's been a very significant interest from the U.S. Treasury Department, in particular from Secretary Paulson on down, on helping with regard to cooperating and developing infrastructure projects, financing, and then ways in which some of the barriers to that could be addressed. And so we had a, I thought, very good discussion on that issue.

With regard to the specific action-oriented items on that, I think we are going to continue this discussion. I think that our Treasury Department, as I mentioned, had launched an initiative with the World Bank that's looking at that. That's a lot of international financial institutions with regard to infrastructure in the hemisphere. And similarly, we reviewed what our negotiators at the technical level had discussed just last week on civil aviation, with regard to liberalization issues and safety issues. And again, that was a big step in and of itself, given that we hadn't had any kind of meetings in the civil aviation liberalization area for approximately ten years. So we talked again more broadly about what the benefits of that kind of liberalization could be, recognizing that that has to be a step-by-step process. And we sought to make sure that we have follow-up meetings as early as possible.

Finally, with regard to industry issues, you had mentioned textiles. That was a topic of discussion. One of the things that I emphasize was the importance -- and this is, again, kind of to our broader statement -- the importance of including the other agencies. As you know, our Commerce Department in the United States is very focused on these issues, is very close with regard to many key industries in the United States. So what we intend to do is go back, work with our Commerce Department to look at ways to get our private sectors more closely together in terms of their discussions. A lot of this is government facilitating and ideas with regard to next steps. Specific outcomes: I think the document that we released is a document that's a good reflection of the discussion. But we thought it was a very, very fruitful beginning.

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

ASST. SEC. SULLIVAN: Let me just quickly answer your first question. My colleague Tom Shannon will -- oh, and I'm sorry, and Roberto, too. Yeah. Maybe that was addressed to Roberto.

ROBERTO AZEVEDO: No, no, no. No, no. On the first one -- let me start with aviation, just (Portuguese).

ASST. SEC. SHANNON: I'll save Dan from this one. First, the substance of the vote today is an internal Brazilian issue so we're not going to comment on the substance. But it's important to understand in terms of the process. Governments and democracies lose votes all the time in legislature. And so for us this is a normal part of the democratic process, as important as the vote might be. And I think that is actually a factor in Brazil's favor when it comes to investments. So I would see this as a normal process in a mature democracy and investors are going to understand it that way.

ASST. SEC. SULLIVAN: I'd just add one other word on the aviation, to follow up on Roberto's comments. The one other area that we did discuss was how much more broadly, how the aviation liberalization can, over time, have benefits to consumers, have benefits to other businesses, can have benefits to economic growth for both countries beyond the aviation sector. And we've had this experience in the United States. We just signed last spring a major aviation liberalization agreement with the European Union, with Canada, with China and even one with Japan, all within the last year. And so part of our discussion was just on the broader macroeconomic dynamics of the benefits to both countries when they engage in these kinds of agreements.

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

ASST. SEC. SHANNON: I have not seen President Cristina Fernández' statements so I can't make any comment on the statement. I will just say, however, that, I mean, our Department of Justice is pursuing a case against several individuals from Venezuela for violation of U.S. laws. And this is a case that is really being run by our Department of Justice. They're the ones who are commenting on this. It is a law enforcement issue and it is an instance of enforcing laws inside the United States.

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

ASST. SEC. SULLIVAN: Two quick answers: First in regard to Venezuela, I don't believe Venezuela's in a crisis right now. What Venezuela is experiencing is democracy. I think that's what happened in the referendum of December 2^nd, and I think it's important to recognize that it is evident that Venezuela has a vocation for democracy and that democracy has an ability to defend itself and that's important.

Secondly, Brazil plays a very important role in South America, both in terms of promoting political stability and economic prosperity. We respect that role. We understand it. And we appreciate it. And the degree to which Brazil and Colombia believe there is a space that Brazil can provide a positive factor in discussions, that's a positive thing. But this is really something between Brazil and Colombia.

QUESTION: (Portuguese).

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