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Brazil’s Lula meets Portuguese president on Europe tour

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met Portugal's leader Saturday on his first European trip since taking office, which comes amid a row with the West over his recent comments on the Ukraine war.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (C) sits next to his wife, Brazilian sociologist Rosangela 'Janja' da Silva (L) during a meeting with Portugal's president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the Belem Palace in Lisbon on April 22, 2023. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met Portugal's leader today on his first European trip since taking office, which comes amid a row with the West over his recent comments on the Ukraine war. Photo by: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP

The veteran leftist is starting a comeback tour that his office has called “the relaunch of Brazil’s diplomatic relations”, after four years of relative isolation under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula returned to the presidency in January, vowing “Brazil is back” on the international stage, and has chosen the country’s former colonial ruler Portugal as his starting point in Europe.

He will also visit Spain on the tour, which comes on the heels of recent trips to China, the United States, Argentina and Uruguay.

After arriving in Lisbon on Friday, Lula’s official programme begins Saturday with meetings with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo and Prime Minister Antonio Costa.

The two countries will sign a series of deals on energy, science, education and other sectors.

Lula has also been pushing to set up a group of countries to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and the topic will be on the agenda for the trip, his foreign ministry said.

Seeking to revive Brazil’s role as a deal-maker and go-between, he has vowed to cultivate friendly ties with all countries, and resisted taking sides with either the United States and Europe on one hand, or China and Russia on the other.

‘Encouraging’ the war

But the 77-year-old ex-metalworker — who previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010 — faces some diplomatic awkwardness after recent comments chiding the European Union and United States over the Ukraine conflict.

On his visit to China last week, Lula said Washington should stop “encouraging” the war, and that the United States and the European Union “need to start talking about peace”.

He has also angered Ukraine by saying it shares the blame for the conflict and suggesting it should agree to give up the Crimean peninsula, which Russia forcefully annexed in 2014 in a prelude to its invasion of Ukraine last year.

After a flurry of criticism from Europe, Kyiv and the United States — including the White House, which accused him of “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda” — Lula dialled back what some saw as his anti-Western tone, saying that Brazil “condemned” Russia’s invasion.

Portugal, a founding member of NATO and one of the first European countries to supply tanks to Ukraine, also voiced disapproval.

Lula, named on Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people last week, will navigate that thorny issue in Lisbon meetings, before meeting business leaders Monday in the northern city of Porto.

Back in the capital, he will then preside together with Costa at a gala to present the Camoes prize, the highest honour in Portuguese language and literature, to beloved Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque.

His schedule in Portugal will wrap up Tuesday with an address to parliament as it marks the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in 1974, which ended Portugal’s last military dictatorship.

Lula then heads to Spain on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he will meet King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

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POLITICS

First pardons granted under Spain’s amnesty for Catalan separatists

A politician and police officer on Tuesday became the first people to benefit from Spain's divisive amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in a botched 2017 secession bid.

First pardons granted under Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists

The amnesty law – approved last month – is expected to affect around 400 people facing trial or already convicted over their roles in the wealthy northeastern region’s failed independence push, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to grant the amnesty in exchange for the key support of Catalan separatist parties in parliament to secure a new term in office following an inconclusive general election last July.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

The separatist parties have threatened to withdraw their support for Sánchez’s minority government unless the amnesty is applied.

Catalonia’s High Court said it had decided to “declare the extinction of criminal responsibility” for former Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch, as well as to Lluís Escolà, an officer in Catalonia’s regional police force, since the crimes they were convicted of “have been amnestied”.

Buch was sentenced last year to four and a half years in jail for embezzlement and misappropriation for hiring Escolà in 2018 and paying him out of public coffers to act as a bodyguard for the former head of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, while he was in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

Escolà was handed a four-year prison sentence for working as Puigdemont’s bodyguard.

Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest shortly after his government led Catalonia’s failed secession push, which involved an independence referendum that was banned by the courts followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.

Spain’s conservative opposition has staged massive street protests against the amnesty law, which judges must decide to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Puigdemont had said he hopes to return to Spain but there is still a warrant for his arrest and a Spanish court continues to investigate him for the alleged crimes of embezzlement and disobedience related to the secession bid.

He also remains under investigation for alleged terrorism over protests in 2019 against the jailing of several referendum leaders that sometimes turned violent.

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