Brazilian President Lula da Silva began his public activities in Washington, D.C. yesterday in a half-hour interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. CNN rushed out a clip featuring his discussion of democracy and former Presidents Bolsonaro and Trump, but ignored his most important message in the interview, that he absolutely intended to speak to President Biden about the urgency of nations working together to secure peace between Ukraine and Russia.
You talk a lot about democracy, but you do not defend Ukraine’s fight for “democracy,” a point which is fundamental for President Biden, Amanpour challenged Lula near the end of the interview, implying he was a fraud. Lula answered, with some passion, that he is very committed to democracy all over the world, but “it is necessary for someone to speak about peace. It is necessary to create interlocutors to try to talk with the parties.” Interlocutors who can sit down with President Putin and show him the mistake he made in invading Ukraine, and who can show Ukraine that it is necessary to talk more, so that the war can stop.
“I don’t know what [President Biden] is going to talk about with me, but what I want to talk to him about, is that it is necessary to create a group of countries to negotiate peace,” Lula insisted.
Amanpour stayed on her attack assignment: You are part of the BRICS, and none of those countries appear to want to talk about peace, they are just talking about Russia. Lula didn’t give an inch: “I want to talk about peace,” with Putin, with Biden, with Xi Jinping, with India, with Indonesia. “I want to talk with everyone about peace, because for me, the world is only going to develop if there is peace, if there is tranquility.” Brazil does not have enough standing in the world to resolve it, Lula added, but “I can tell you that I am going to dedicate myself to see if a path can be found for someone to speak of peace.”
Amanpour kept going: Why did you refuse to send armaments to Ukraine to help it defend itself? You are asking Brazil to enter the war, he shot back.
“I don’t want to enter into the war. I want to end the war. This is my dilemma and my commitment…. We have to have a group of people who talk about peace and show that peace is the only thing that can reestablish the dignity of human life, the right to work and live in dignity, decently. That is what the Ukrainians have to understand. Now it is necessary to create a narrative—because Russia is not just any country, so it is necessary to build a narrative which at least gives them enough for them to stop, the way the United States stopped the Vietnam War. It wasn’t easy, but it had to stop one day. So, if it began with a mistake, we have to fix it now, stop the war, and after that we’ll discuss around a negotiating table what it is that people really want.” https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2023/02/10/luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-amanpour-brazil-us-democracy.cnn
