Reporting from Bogota, Colombia Borzou Daragahi, and Beirut -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives today in Brazil on a Latin American and African tour amid U.S. and domestic criticism that, by playing host, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is squandering his newfound global influence.
The first visit to Brazil by an Iranian head of state has generated two protests in the last week in which thousands of demonstrators, many of them Jews alarmed by Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust and on Israel, took to the streets and beaches of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Protests in May forced Ahmadinejad to cancel a scheduled visit.
The controversial Iranian leader, who is also visiting Venezuela, Bolivia, Gambia and Senegal, said Sunday upon boarding a plane in Tehran that he hopes to help spearhead a new global order in cooperation with Latin America and Africa.
"These countries are important and each has a determining role in their region or continent," Ahmadinejad said before leaving for his first stop in Banjul, capital of the tiny West African Muslim nation of Gambia.
"New orders should be established in the world," he said, according to state television. "Iran, Brazil and Venezuela in particular can have determining roles in designing and establishing these new orders."
In Brazil, Ahmadinejad and Lula are expected to sign cooperation agreements in biotechnology, energy and agriculture. An Iranian deputy foreign minister told the official Brazilian news agency last month that Tehran hopes to expand trade with Brazil to $15 billion from $2 billion in the petrochemical, energy, agricultural and medical fields.
About 200 Iranian businessmen are traveling with Ahmadinejad, who is scheduled to address the Brazilian Congress and speak to students in Brasilia.
Venezuela's ambassador to Tehran announced this month that new uranium deposits had been discovered in Venezuela and that his country and Iran "are now cooperating on a research and development project," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"At this juncture, Iran and Venezuela have no nuclear cooperation," said David Velasquez Caraballo, the envoy. "But in the future, such cooperation might be established."
Ahmadinejad, weakened by a domestic opposition movement that accuses him of stealing Iran's June 12 presidential election, is searching for new economic opportunities, with stiff sanctions and economic restrictions threatened by the West if negotiations on Tehran's nuclear development program fail.
