Pretoria - South Africa, India and Brazil have agreed to jointly develop a satellite and forge closer cooperation on global issues like UN reforms, climate change and world trade talks.
This emerged at the conclusion of the IBSA summit held in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, which was attended by Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Jacob Zuma.
Briefing the media afterwards, leaders lauded progress made among the three countries in promoting people to people contact.
Zuma said the decision to develop the satellite jointly was symbolic of the fact that the forum has entered a new phase.
"We see this initiative as an opportunity to re-inforce our shared development objectives. A joint satellite could lend support to areas like agriculture, education energy and health information and communications."
Zuma said that IBSA has a natural dialogue forum and he has great confidence in its future.
"But we are yet to fully explore the full potential of this forum," he said.
Noting that all the three IBSA countries were influential in their own regions, Zuma said: "We are in a position to make contributions to a global debate. This became clear at the Copenhagen Summit on climate change when IBSA and China played a key role in reaching an agreement."
He said the IBSA countries were key for reform of global bodies like UN to make them more democratic and more responsive to the poor.
Zuma said the three countries also needed more coordination on climate change to ensure legally binding agreement on the issue in the next summit in Mexico next year.
"By working together we can build a better world and bring better future," Zuma said.
The summit also saw agreements on solar energy, science and technology, intellectual property and cooperation between diplomatic academies signed.
India's Singh said this has been a very useful round of discussions for IBSA, reaching agreement on several important global issues.
"The IBSA framework has become the embodiment of south-south cooperation," he said, naming reform of the United Nations Security Council and other multilateral forums and a need for satisfying conclusion to the Doha round of world trade talks among them.
South Africa will host the next IBSA summit in October next year.
