While the personal meeting between the presidents of Argentina and Brazil continues to be postponed, this Thursday the admiral will arrive in the country Flavio Viana Rocha, Brazilian Secretary of Strategic Affairs and man of maximum confidence of President Bolsonaro. Upon the invitation of your peer Gustavo Beliz and the efforts of Ambassador Daniel Scioli, Viana Rocha he will visit various ministers in Buenos Aires during his 48-hour visit to Buenos Aires.
The Brazilian admiral will have meetings with Beliz, Martín Guzmán, Agustín Rossi and Felipe Solá.
According to sources close to the Argentine embassy in Brasilia, Viana Rocha intervened to unblock the controversy over the purchase of wheat from Brazil to other non-Mercosur countries without tariffs, and also helped Brazil export 1.5 million doses of Midazolam to Argentina. , a drug used as a sleep inducer in the respirators of COVID patients. Until that moment, Brazil had closed the exports of that drug.
Viana Rocha was appointed to his position a year ago, on February 14, 2020. Until then he served as Commander of Naval District No. 1, Rio de Janeiro, and he knows Mar del Plata for his profession as a diver.
A man of extreme confidence and daily consultation of Bolsonaro – whom he has known since 2002 when he held the position of parliamentary advisor to the Navy in the Chamber of Deputies – Rocha was appointed when the president hierarchized the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, removing it from the orbit of the General Secretariat of the Presidency to turn it into a direct advisory body to the President. Your task is identify risks and threats to integrity and national interests and promoting actions aimed at a greater international insertion of the country.
Rocha is also a central actor in the articulation of the dialogue between the three powers. On June 17, he held a videoconference with Béliz, during which he highlighted possibilities for cooperation in the “blue economy” (protection of maritime wealth); Defense – including the defense industry (naval repairs, strategic capacity building); Vaca Muerta (energy cooperation) and technological issues, especially 5G, Artificial Intelligence, and nano-technology.
A week ago Scioli held his last meeting with Rocha, in which they discussed the negotiations for the Argentine purchase of 6×6 armored vehicles; the vaccination policy against COVID-19 and the Argentine-Brazilian business summit in São Paulo.
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