Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is already in New York, where she arrived this Monday morning. According to the tradition Rousseff will make the opening speech at the 68th United Nations General Assembly on the morning of September 24. The president has no official engagements during the day today.
One of the key messages she intends to deliver in her speech to the UN is what she calls “a new governance against the invasion of privacy.”
The theme is a result of the spying allegations against the National Security Agency of the United States (NSA)m which led the Brazilian president to postpone the state visit she was supposed to make to Washington in October.
The reports were published last month based on data released by Edward Snowden, a former employee of a company providing service to the US government. There are indications that ordinary citizens from Brazil and other countries, as well as the Brazilian president, her aides and oil company Petrobras have been spied on.
Before the speech, scheduled for 9 am, she will be meeting with UN’s secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
Rousseff will be the first head of state to speak, followed by US president Barack Obama, with whom the Brazilian leader spoke last week about the allegations of spying and from whom she demanded explanations.
The two presidents will also talk about the conflict in Syria. Both Rousseff and Obama will condemn the use of weapons of mass destruction. The Brazilian president, however, should make it clear once again that Brazil is against the use of military force against the Syrian government.
Obama, on the other hand, seeks support for a military attack if the government of Bashar Al Assad doesn’t dispose of chemical weapons it has.
Tuesday afternoon, Rousseff should be at the UN for the first meeting of the High Level Forum on Sustainable Development, which gathers annually environment ministers and heads of state every four years.
The objective is to implement the goals set in the final document of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20, titled The Future We Want. The countries pledged at the conference in Rio de Janeiro, in 2012, to set goals for development and to eliminate poverty in the world.
On Tuesday, the Brazilian leader will also meet with the president of Telefonica company, Cesar Alierta. No meeting with other heads of state are scheduled. On Wednesday, September 25, Dilma will talk at a seminar on opportunities in infrastructure in Brazil. After that, she should fly back to Brasília.
