MOSCOW, June 18 (Itar-Tass) - Interparliamentary interaction in the BRICS format will unveil new opportunities for boosting relations between Brazil and Russia, Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko said at the meeting with speaker of Brazil’s House of Representatives Henrique Eduardo Alves on Tuesday.
“It seems interesting to create a permanent consultative parliamentary forum of BRICS member-states,” she said. “Russia considers Brazil one of its priority partners, and our relations are of strategic nature.”
Of late the high-level political dialogue between the two countries has strengthened and turned regular, Matviyenko said.
She also expressed the hope that a meeting of the two countries’ presidents on the sidelines of the G20 summit due in St. Petersburg will give a fresh impetus to Russian-Brazilian relations.
The speaker also pointed to “traditionally high level of interaction between the two countries in international structures - the UN and others, as positions of Russia and Brazil are close or coincide.”
Matviyenko also emphasized an important role of the two countries’ parliaments in developing a contract and legal base and asked Alves to take under control ratification and fulfillment of several agreements, including that on mutual protection of intellectual property and cooperation in ensuring international information security.
She pointed to dynamic development of trade and economic relations between the two countries. Last year the two countries’ trade turnover increased by more than 12 percent to $5.7 billion.
“We have all opportunities and potential to take the bilateral trade to $10 billion as the two countries’ leaders agreed,” Matviyenko said.
She called for further implementation of joint projects targeted at the creation of a technological alliance.
“In our arsenal we have the whole range of promising projects in energy, industrial, scientific and technological, cultural and educational cooperation,” the speaker said.
Matviyenko also called for stronger exchange of experience with Brazil in organizing international contests, first of all, in the preparation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Russia in 2014 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and in Russia in 2018.
“The Kazan Universiade will open soon and we will actively use experience of Brazil,” she said.
Speaker of Brazil’s House of Representatives Henrique Eduardo Alves said in turn Brazil’s most heavy weight parliamentary delegation arrived in Moscow. This fact “proves genuine interest in Russia and in deeper relations at different levels of cooperation,” he said.