It was not the first time Lula
floated the idea of a common currency, having previously said in a trip to China that such a measure could help developing countries depend less on the U.S. dollar.
Earlier this year he had also suggested that Brazil and Argentina could establish a
shared unit of value for bilateral trade. Argentina has long suffered from a series of challenges, including a lack of dollars and inflation of more than 100%.
Lula on Wednesday also praised the New Development Bank (NDB), the multilateral lender set up by the BRICS states whose new head is former Brazilian President
Dilma Rousseff , saying he would work for it to "effectively become a large investment bank."
"If possible even larger than the World Bank," he added.
Speaking on a broad range of topics, Lula also said his
government would not privatize any public company and once again
called for an expansion of the U.N. Security Council's permanent
members.
He also defended his proposal for a "peace group" to broker
an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, saying anything could
be discussed once the nations sat down to talk peace.
(Reporting by Belén Carreño in Madrid and Gabriel Araujo in Sao
Paulo; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Mark Porter)
