Lebanon, Brazil to sign defense agreements

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BEIRUT - Brazil’s foreign minister said Monday that his nation was poised to sign defense cooperation agreements with Lebanon, at a meeting with Prime Minister Saad Hariri at the Grand Serail in Beirut.

Hariri and Brazilian Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes Ferreira Filho discussed soon to be signed agreements to “open a legal framework” for defense cooperation between the two countries, Filho said according to a statement.

He said the meeting with Hariri came after “recent communications between the Brazilian and Lebanese governments at the highest level.”

Filho said Brazilian President Michel Temer, who is of Lebanese descent, has important relations with Lebanon that go beyond political and social ties. He added that the Brazilian president intends to visit Lebanon before the end of the year.

“There are also familial ties, because there is a very large presence of Lebanese and Brazilians of Lebanese descent ... involved in all aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life,” he said. “Even my wife belongs to a Lebanese family.”

According to Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, who also met Filho, there are more than 7 million people of Lebanese origins in Brazil.

During the conference, which was held at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Brazilian official confirmed his country’s participation in the three international donor conferences to be held in the coming months in Rome, Paris and Brussels, a statement from Bassil’s press office said.

The conferences aim at securing financial assistance to Lebanon, to bolster its infrastructure and economy, as it struggles to deal with the burden of an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees.

The “dangerous consequences” of the Syrian refugee crisis are not limited to Lebanon, Bassil said at the meeting, “but extend to nearby countries, [including] Europe.”

Bassil expressed additional concerns over integration, adding that imposing a policy of resettling refugees in host countries leads to “dramatic” political shifts on the global level.

Filho said Lebanese authorities had been presented a road map on signing an agreement between Lebanon and South American trade bloc Mercosur, and that negotiations on the matter would follow.

He said he would begin to meet with the foreign ministers of Mercosur member nations next week and discuss negotiating with Lebanon.

Filho is on a three-day visit to Lebanon.