The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa solidified their ties at a summit that highlighted the regional powers’ role as spokesmen for the developing world.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pressed for United Nations reform, urged richer nations to yield on heated trade talks and agreed to boost their cooperation on energy. Their first trilateral summit in Brasilia came three years after the trio created the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) to promote the interests of their emerging markets. “We are pluralistic and multicultural societies. We are the largest democracies respectively on each of our continents and these values bind us in an unique way,”Singh said.

The summit’s host, Lula, has striven to boost relations between developing nations and traveled to New Delhi in 2004 as part of his effort. “The potential of the relations between South Africa, India and Brazil is enormous,” Lula said as he spoke with Singh before business leaders from the three countries.“We had not discovered it because for decades we were geared toward strong ties with countries of the North and we almost forgot the South-South relations,” he said. The three leaders called for UN reform to be approved this year with the expansion of the UN Security Council to add permanent members from Africa and Latin America and another Asian member.

The 15-member council The 15-member council includes five permanent members with veto power: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.