I'm John Batchewith, my colleagues Joseph Umar and Ernesto Arohusho.

Ernesto, I begin with the headline that dominated the news over these last days.

Brazil's Lula says bricks to pick new members based on geopolitical weight.

And the result is Argentina, as I recall Lula de Silva at the Johannesburg meeting indicated

early on that he was in support of Argentina.

And now it is the one member from the Americas to join bricks.

What is the significance of this to the Lula de Silva to Brazil?

How does Argentina are deeply troubled nation now going through an election cycle, the

elections in October, $44 billion in debt to IMF, needing more?

How does Lula de Silva's opinion influence both Argentina and Brazil?

Well, first of all, it's interesting because there are some rumors that initially Lula didn't

want Argentina to join bricks at this time.

This has to do probably with some Brazilian diplomatic circles thinking that Brazil should

stay as the only Latin American country in bricks.

Probably Lula was the strong armed by China to drop that sort of resistance if this was

the case.

And then he sells that as his support by Argentina, the entrance when it was the other way around.

This was the vintage Lula, of course.

But above all, this is opening the door to China and Russia to have this sort of more

official presence, not only in Argentina, but in the rest of the Americas.

With Argentina now, or Latin America, with Argentina, and probably that we'll be talking

about, well, Bolivia and Cuba are already candidates, but maybe bringing the other big

...