President Tran Duc Luong's mark in Vietnam - Brazil relations

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva welcomedPresident Tran Duc Luong at the Presidential Palace in 2004.

From November 16 to 25, 2004, President Tran Duc Luong and a high-ranking Vietnamese delegation paid state visits to Brazil, Chile, Argentina and attended the 12th APEC Summit in Chile.

At that time, I was serving as the Vietnamese Ambassador to Brazil. When we learned about the President's visit, the embassy staff were very excited because at that time, Vietnamese delegations visiting Brazil were very few, almost ten years later there was a second high-level delegation. But this time was different from previous times, in that Vietnam had opened an embassy.

Therefore, the Embassy determined that it would have to serve the delegation well. As for me, I was both excited and worried, because after two years in Brazil, I realized that the relationship between the two countries had a lot of potential, especially in terms of trade and economy, but it had not been exploited. I wanted to take this opportunity to report to the President and the delegation about the potential relationship between the two countries. There was also some worry, because this was the first time the Embassy had welcomed a delegation led by a head of state, and the Embassy staff was small, and there were no people who spoke Portuguese - the language that most Brazilians, including politicians , spoke. In the capital city of Brasilia, at that time, the Embassy had no relationship with any businesses and there were no Vietnamese people living there.

Before the visit, the Embassy welcomed an advance delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Le Van Bang to work on the program and contents of the visit. Mr. Bang had experience as an Ambassador to the US, serving the President's visit when he attended the United Nations Summit and some of the President's diplomatic activities, so he shared with me stories about cooking and serving the President's wife if she joined the delegation. Mr. Bang said that the President is very kind but very strict about diplomatic procedures.

There is not much time to prepare. There are several concerns to be resolved. First, the delegation arrived in Sao Paulo on November 16, 2004, but on November 17, the Brazilian Government officially welcomed the delegation in Brasilia. Sao Paulo is the largest economic center in Brazil and the entire South American region. Here, the delegation will have four important activities: the President meets the Governor of the state, attends the Business Forum between the two countries, visits the Embraer aircraft manufacturing company and meets with overseas Vietnamese.

I arrived in Sao Paulo a day earlier than the delegation to meet with overseas Vietnamese, invite them (in all of Brazil at that time there were less than 200 people) to attend the business forum between the two countries and send representatives to greet the President. I asked a person fluent in Portuguese to be an interpreter at the forum, met a Vietnamese professor who was then very famous in agricultural economics and was teaching at the University of Sao Paulo, and asked him to invite representatives of businesses to attend the forum. Thanks to that, the activities in Sao Paulo were carried out smoothly.

After finishing work, in the late afternoon of November 16, 2004, the plane carrying President Tran Duc Luong returned to the capital Brasilia. On the morning of November 17, the Brazilian Government organized an official welcome for President Tran Duc Luong at the Presidential Palace.

After the official welcoming ceremony, President Tran Duc Luong and President Lula da Silva met privately and held talks. After the official talks, President Tran Duc Luong and Brazilian President Lula da Silva witnessed the exchange of two important documents: an exchange of letters between the two Foreign Ministries on the visa exemption agreement for diplomatic passport holders, and an exchange of letters on granting each other the Most Favored Nation status in trade - this status officially takes effect 30 days from the date the two sides exchange letters and expires when Vietnam officially joins the World Trade Organization (WTO). On this occasion, the two sides also reached an agreement to conclude bilateral negotiations on Vietnam's accession to the WTO. Also on November 17, President Tran Duc Luong had private meetings with President of the Brazilian Senate Jose Sarney, President of the House of Representatives Joao Paulo Cunha and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Brazil.

It can be said that the official State visit to Brazil by President Tran Duc Luong in 2004 created an important milestone in the relationship between the two countries. After this visit, many high-level visits by leaders of the two countries took place. The relationship between Vietnam and Brazil has grown since the visit of President Tran Duc Luong, from Comprehensive Partnership to Strategic Partnership.

In particular, the most outstanding is the rapid development of economic and trade relations between the two countries. If in 2002, the total trade turnover between Vietnam and Brazil was only modest at over 50 million USD, in 2004 it was 75 million USD, then by 2024 it had reached 8 billion USD. This year, the two countries are striving to bring the total bilateral trade turnover to 10 billion USD as committed, and the target will be 15 billion USD by 2030.

Ambassador NGUYEN VAN HUYNH - Former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Vietnam to Brazil

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/dau-an-cua-chu-tich-nuoc-tran-duc-luong-trong-quan-he-viet-nam-brazil-post796662.html