Word: lula
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...South American powerhouse has been recognized as the first real counterweight to the U.S. in the western hemisphere - and that means, at least in the minds of other countries in the Americas, taking a larger and more proactive part in helping solve New World political dysfunction like Honduras'. Lula and Obama are buddies and left-of-center soul mates, but when Obama said last month that those who question his resolve in Honduras were being hypocritical because they're "the same people who say that we're always intervening in Latin America," he was including Brazil, which has voiced...
...Modernist building in Brasília) is widely considered one of the world's best, and it has played a key role in defusing South American crises like last year's chest-thumping row between Colombia and Venezuela. Brazilian troops run the U.N. mission in violence-torn Haiti. And Lula, one of the world's most popular heads of state, has become arguably the most effective intermediary between Washington and a resurgent, anti-U.S. Latin left. (Read about the Honduras quagmire...
Brazil prefers to keep that work behind the scenes, and its foreign policy is decidedly non-interventionist. "We don't feel a temptation to export our political and economic model," Lula foreign policy adviser Marco Aurélio Garcia told TIME last year. "We don't believe everyone should be like us." But at the same time, Lula is on a crusade to make Brazil, with the world's fifth largest population and ninth largest economy, a serious international player. He's stumping hard for a permanent Brazilian seat on the U.N. Security Council and more input from developing nations...
...making hyperventilated comments, claiming last week that "Israeli mercenaries" were targeting him and his entourage with high-frequency radiation. Micheletti, meanwhile, has gone over the top this week, expelling an Organization of American States (OAS) delegation and trying to shut down constitutional rights in Honduras. He even gave Lula until early next week to declare how long Brazil intends to harbor Zelaya or risk unspecified measures against the embassy. Lula shot back that Brazil won't "respond to an ultimatum from a government of coup mongers." But, says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington...
Still, because most analysts agree that the Honduras coup sends a dangerous signal to the region's fledgling democracies, they feel that having Brazil's respected heft thrown more directly into the mix could help negotiations. Says another source close to Lula, "I think the talks are evolving now that Zelaya is back and under our protection." If an accord actually gets inked in Honduras, Brazil's image as a regional power broker will take off. And if not, Lula at least will win points with the leftist base of his Workers Party. "Even if it doesn't work...