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Lula urges trade pact linking Brazil, India, South Africa

AFP, Mumbai
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called Wednesday for Brazil, India and South Africa to agree on a trilateral trade pact as part of a new bloc to take on developed economies.
Lula, whose four-day visit to India was due to wind up later Wednesday, has been seeking a free trade deal among developing countries as a way of offsetting the trading clout of developed nations.
"A trilateral agreement between India, Brazil and South Africa will give us the political will at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) to get the flexibility we need for our goods that are often taxed by the developed nations," Lula said a business seminar speech.
Lula said a Brazilian team led by the country's foreign minister would visit India in March to work out a preliminary plan to explore such an agreement with South Africa.
"Our foreign minister will come in March and talk to his Indian counterpart on a trilateral agreement possibility with India and South Africa," he told the seminar
hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
He said an India-Brazil-South African trading bloc could be boosted by direct flights between Brazil and India via Johannesburg.
India and Brazil are leaders among the developing countries, which banded together at the failed WTO talks in Cancun last September to press the developed world to phase out farm subsidies.
Lula said Brazil and India needed to create a strong trading partnership with China and Russia to make their presence felt in a globalised world, especially at the WTO.
"At Cancun, no one believed the G21 (developing nations) could create such a impact. But we did, which makes us believe 20 countries representing more than half the world's population, can change rules of the world trade," he said. "We want to buy and we want to sell, but in an atmosphere of equality."
The Cancun discussions collapsed after delegates failed to agree on such issues as eliminating farm subsidies in industrialized nations and proposals to extend
the WTO mandate to cross-border investment.
"Many developed countries talk of free trade as long as it is free for them. The same countries create obstacles the moment we talk of our goods. The world respects only those who have self respect and India and Brazil have it and also many other similarities that can be advantageous to us," Lula said.
Earlier, Brazil's Tourism Minister Walfrido Mares Gula made a pitch to lure Bollywood, India's huge Hindi-language film industry, to the country.
"We have the Amazon, Rio De Janeiro and the beaches. We can be a destination for your film industry just as Switzerland or London," he told AFP.
He added that Brazil planned to boost two-way tourist traffic to 100,000 people by 2007 annually from a current 10,000.
During his visit, Lula, who was chief guest at India's Republic Day parade, signed a preferential trading deal with India and the Latin American trading bloc, Mercosul, giving India access to a common market of 220 million consumers.