Lula to Attend CELAC-EU Summit "in Solidarity with Venezuela"

Brazil's Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, confirmed this Wednesday that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will attend the IV Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union (EU), in an act of "solidaridad con Venezuela" (solidarity with Venezuela).

The summit will be held this coming Sunday and Monday in the Colombian city of Santa Marta. Vieira told journalists that, in addition to addressing the "common agenda" between the two blocs, the event will be a kind of act of "regional solidarity" with Venezuela.

Lula will travel to Santa Marta from the city of Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, the host city for the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP30). He will return to Belém after participating in the summit.

A Region of Peace

Vieira cited that Lula has emphasized on more than one occasion that Latin America and the Caribbean constitute "a region of peace and cooperation," a clear allusion to the United States' military deployment in areas near Venezuelan territorial waters.

Just this Tuesday, in a press conference with foreign correspondents, Lula stated that the CELAC-EU summit would only make sense if this U.S. military presence in Caribbean waters were discussed.

He explained that he even discussed the matter in a recent meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, to whom he asserted that Latin America must be maintained as a zone of peace.

"I don't want us to get to a land invasion. I told President Trump that political problems are not solved with weapons. They are solved with dialogue," Lula said.

Criticism of U.S. Anti-Drug Operations

He assured that Brazil has "every interest" in helping to resolve the conflict and opined that the United States, if it wants to fight drug trafficking, should "be trying to help these countries" rather than "shooting" at them.

In recent months, the forces the U.S. has deployed in the Caribbean have launched a series of attacks against civilian boats in Caribbean waters near Venezuela and in the Pacific near Colombia, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.

Since the beginning of September, at least 60 people have been killed in these attacks, which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has condemned and described as "extrajudicial executions."