(CNSNews.com) – Israel’s ceremonial president has launched another diplomatic push for support in Latin America, making a state visit to its two largest countries just weeks before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due for another of his frequent visits to the region.
Brazil and Argentina are home to two of the world’s ten biggest Jewish communities, yet President Shimon Peres is the first Israeli head of state to pay an official visit to Argentina in 20 years and to Brazil since the 1960s.
Peres, who recently turned 86, has played an increasingly active role in drawing attention to Jerusalem’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear programs and Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“With this visit, President Peres will try to strengthen and increase strategic, diplomatic and economic relations with these two Latin American countries of fundamental importance,” Peres’ office said in a statement.
It said that in his meetings with the two countries’ presidents, ministers, lawmakers and Jewish communities, Peres would “address Iranian infiltration in the continent.”
As the U.S. has sought to contain Iran in recent years over the nuclear issue, Tehran has found diplomatic and economic openings in Latin America, thanks primarily to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his leftist allies in Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere.
Chavez has voiced support for Iran’s nuclear program, and last September – during one of his regular visits to Tehran – offered to ship gasoline to Iran in the event its gas imports are targeted by international sanctions. Iran relies on imports for some 40 percent of its gas requirements.
On Sunday, Chavez announced on his weekly TV and radio broadcast that Ahmadinejad would pay another visit to Venezuela before the end of 2009. He defended the alliance, saying that Iran, like Venezuela, was being attacked by “the empire” – the United States.
“We are accused of exporting terrorism, but they are the killers,” he added, in a comment presumably referring again to Americans.
In contrast to his cozy ties with Iran, Chavez has become stridently critical of Israel, and last January broke off diplomatic ties with the Jewish state while expelling Israel’s ambassador in Caracas.
Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, at a briefing last week accused Chavez of having turned Venezuela into “an Iranian outpost” in the western hemisphere. Chavez’ foreign ministry hit back, saying Ayalon’s comment was a sign of Israel’s “vile, meddling and aggressive attitude.”
Peres’ office said his visit, starting in Brasilia Tuesday, came at the invitation of Brazilian President Luis Inacio da Silva and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
While both left-leaning, the two Latin American presidents are not associated with Chavez and his Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) bloc, a nine-nation left-wing grouping.
Brazil, however, has been moving towards closer ties with Iran, and Ahmadinejad is scheduled to visit in late November. (Late last month, U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of a House Latin America subcommittee, convened a meeting on Iran’s regional maneuvering, during which he criticized Brazil’s stance and urged it to reconsider plans to strengthen ties with Tehran.)
Argentina, by contrast, has been embroiled in a long running dispute with Iran over the alleged involvement of top Iranian leaders in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires – the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
Eighty-five people were killed in the suicide truck bombing at the Argentine-Israel Mutual Association (AMIA). Investigators accused Iran of ordering and facilitating the bombing, and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of carrying it out. Iran has consistently denied the allegations.
Argentina’s judicial authorities in 2006 issued arrest warrants for eight senior Iranians, including a former president, top intelligence figures and diplomats. At its request, Interpol issued “red notices” for five of the eight the following year.
The row returned to the headlines in the fall when Ahmadinejad named one of the wanted suspects as his defense minister.
Argentina’s foreign office called the nomination an affront to the AMIA victims, but a spokesman for Ahmadinejad dismissed the criticism as “a Zionist plot.”
During his visit to Argentina, Peres will take part in a service in memory of the victims of another bombing, that of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires two years before the AMIA attack. Twenty-nine people were killed in the 1992 embassy blast. The two events were believed to be linked, and Argentina in 1998 expelled Iranian diplomats in connection with both.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, 185,000, while Brazil’s Jewish community is 97,000-strong, according to the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute figures cited by the World Jewish Congress.