President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has ordered Brazil's embassy in Baghdad reopened in a bid to normalize diplomatic relations with Iraq, the Foreign Ministry said Friday, August 24. "With this step Brazil resumes, at a suitable level, diplomatic relations with Iraq, initiated December 1, 1967," the ministry said in a statement.
Official ties were severed in 1990 when Brazil joined in sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council against Baghdad because of its invasion of Kuwait.
The reopening of an embassy in Iraq will permit Brazil to assist the growing number of Brazilian businesses interested in doing business there more efficiently, the statement said.
Trade between Brazil and Iraq has increased since Iraq resumed oil sales under the UN Food for Oil Program, but the commercial balance favors Iraq, the ministry said. Even with the resumption of relations, the Brazilian government will not alter its "traditional posture" of complying with UN resolutions on Iraq, the statement said.
The move "will serve as a starting point for a renewed relation between the two countries, while awaiting normalization of the relations between Iraq and the international community," the statement said. ― (AFP, Brasilia)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
