President Ahmadinejad to visit Brazil

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to pay a visit to Brazil in the near future, Tehran's envoy to Brasilia announced on Saturday. Mohsen Shaterzadeh said the Iranian President is due to take a trip to Brazil this year to attend a meeting with his counterpart Dilma Rousseff to discuss bilateral ties and cooperation. The envoy, who was speaking to Brazil's state news agency at the end of his three-year term, did not mentioned the exact date of the visit. Yet, he pointed out that Ahmadinejad's trip would be limited to Brazil and he would not visit any other country in the region. Ahmadinejad was on a five-day tour of Latin America earlier this month, which took him to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Since taking office in 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expanded Iran's cooperation with many Latin American states, including Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced in a report in December 2009 that Brazil is the largest trade partner of Iran among the Latin American countries. Data also showed that Iran's trade with Latin America tripled to $2.9bln in 2008. The report said the turnover of economic exchanges between Iran and its largest trade partner in Latin America, i.e. Brazil, reached around $1.3bln in 2008. In January 2010, Tehran hosted a conference on 'Investment Opportunities in Brazil' to review ways of expanding economic cooperation between Iran and the Latin American state. Tehran's relations with Brasilia specially warmed up since the former Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, came to power. Da Silva, in cooperation with Turkey, even worked out a proper plan - known as the Tehran Declaration - in 2010 to mediate between Iran and the US-led West over the former's nuclear issue, although Washington and its allies dumped his efforts in a move which shocked both Brasilia and Ankara.