PM to leave Sunday for Brazil, Cuba for IBSA, NAM Summits

New Delhi, Sep 8 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will leave here on Sunday on an eight-day visit to Brazil and Cuba for the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summits which are expected to lead to a new surge in cooperation among developing countries on global political and economic issues of concern to them.

Dr Singh, who will reach Brasilia on September 11 after an overnight halt in Frankfurt, will have bilateral meetings with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other Brazilian leaders on September 12, during which the two sides will sign as many as eight agreements aimed at taking their relationship to a new high.

The first IBSA summit will be held on the following day at the end of which the three-year-old grouping of the largest democracies in Asia, Africa and Latin America will sign five trilateral documents designed to bring them closer to each other, especially in the areas of agriculture, biofuels, information technology and trade.

The 14th NAM Summit at Havana on September 15-16 will see the coming together of 116 member-states with a renewed resolve to project a new and contemporary vision of the movement and make it more relevant to the post-Cold War and post 9/11 world.

Briefing reporters, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said this would be the first bilateral visit to Brazil by an Indian Prime Minister in 38 years after Mrs Indira Gandhi had visited the country in 1968.

India attaches great importance to its relations with Brazil, which has emerged as one of the most dynamic economies in the world today and with which it has developed a close partnership in recent years.

Bilateral trade has touched 2.3 billion dollars and there has been an encouraging trend of cross-investments.

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), for instance, has already invested 500 million dollars in an offshore petroleum exploration project in Brazil and its Brazilian counterpart, Petrobraz, is looking at a major investment in an offshore venture in India.

Many Indian pharmaceutical companies have also set up base in Brazil and are using those facilities to access the Latin American market.

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