Japan's Koizumi opens Latin American visit in Brazil
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is in Brazil for a three-day visit aiming to boost relations and strengthen financial ties, his first trip to Latin America on a tour that will also take him to Mexico and the United States.
On Wednesday, he is scheduled to visit sites honoring Japanese immigrants in one of Sao Paulo's biggest parks. Brazil is home to one of the largest Japanese communities outside Japan and hundreds of thousands of Brazilians of Japanese descent live in Sao Paulo, the center of most Japanese investment in Brazil and the country's leading industrial state.
After his arrival Tuesday, Koizumi saw the polluted Tiete river, where the Japan Bank for International Cooperation has financed 525 million reals (US$180 million) cleanup project.
Koizumi and Sao Paulo state Gov. Geraldo Alckmin symbolically broke ground on a riverside park that will be a grove of brazilwood saplings, the country's endangered national tree.
They also toured agricultural areas just outside Sao Paulo that are home to coffee and orange plantations and huge sugar cane farms where the harvest is processed into refined sugar and alcohol fuel, or ethanol.
Starting next year, Japanese gas suppliers will be allowed to cut gas with up to 3 percent alcohol content, which would reduce pollution and lower the country's dependence on imported oil.
Brazil, the world's largest producer of refined sugar and alcohol made from sugar cane, wants to export the fuel to Japan.
Millions of Brazilians use cars that run on pure alcohol, and the country's automakers last year introduced "flex-fuel'' cars that run on either gas or alcohol or any combination of the two.
China is Brazil's largest Asian trading partner, but last year's US$4.8 billion of trade between Brazil and Japan is likely to increase as Japan emerges from an 11-year recession, said Akira Chiba, a spokesman for Koizumi.
"Japan should become an interesting partner for Brazil,'' Chiba said.
Koizumi is accompanied by members of the Japanese Business Federation, which has fueled speculation that Japan will use the trip to seek a bilateral free trade agreement with Brazil.
Japanese officials Tuesday denied that such an accord was in the works, although Brazilian observers have yet to rule it out.
"A free trade accord is not yet on the table, but it's something the Brazilian business community believes should be proposed,'' said Jose de Freitas Mascarenhas, president of the Brazil-Japan Economics Committee at Brazil's National Confederation of Industry.
Brazil wants to attract more Japanese investment while boosting exports to Japan.
"I think with the stabilization of the Brazilian economy, this will help with the re-establishment of Japanese business here,'' Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said ahead of Koizumi's visit.
Total Japanese foreign direct investment in Brazil last year rose to US$1.3 billion from US$500 million in 2002.
Japan is deeply invested in Brazilian manufacturing and production of steel, pulp, paper and automobiles. Analysts say it could consider diversify, particularly in Brazil's agribusiness sector, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
Koizumi has strong links to Brazil. One of his cousins, Kenji Iryo, immigrated to Brazil in 1956. Iryo, now 72, is a retired veterinarian and told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper he wished his cousin had more time to see the natural beauties of Brazil, a country nearly as large as the continental United States.
Koizumi will spend most of Wednesday in Sao Paulo before heading to Brasilia, the capital, for a meeting Thursday with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In Mexico, Koizumi is expected to sign a free-trade agreement with President Vicente Fox.
In New York, he is expected to lobby for a permanent seat for Japan on the United Nations Security Council. The only veto-holding permanent council members are the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France.
Koizumi will address the U.N. General Assembly and meet later with U.S. President George W. Bush.
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