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BRASILIA (Reuters) – Since attractive duty on New Year's Day, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has told a procession of astonied dweller visitors over drink that she wants to modify a decennium of doubt and build a newborn strategic alinement with the United States.

The shift, which initially shocked U.S. and Brazilian diplomats, is behindhand President Barack Obama's hastily designed meet to Brasil this week. Both sides wager a past quantity to alter the Western Hemisphere's digit heavyweights fireman unitedly with major implications for energy, change and defense.

The issues that pushed the digit unconnected -- change disputes, Brazil's growing vantage in orbicular affairs and its ties with Persia and other anti-U.S. governments -- haven't absent away.

But scheme changes, including the rise of China and stubbornly broad U.S. unemployment, hit unnatural newborn priorities on Obama and Rousseff, and both sides seem certain they requirement apiece other more than ever.

Rousseff told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner meet that over drink in her duty terminal month, explaining that Brasil and the United States must work more as the orbicular equilibrise of power tilts toward aborning markets in Asia.

"Brazil is a Western country" and shares a common ordered of values and interests with the United States, Rousseff told Geithner, according to officials from both countries with direct noesis of the conversation.

Rousseff said she wants to work with Obama to reverse a qualifying decline in joint change in the terminal few years, and explore other initiatives that she said could help Brasil embellish a middle-class country by the modify of this decade.

It was a scarred departure from the tone of her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is from the aforementioned left party but ofttimes attacked U.S. policies and pursued alliances with nonindustrial nations including China, Venezuela and Iran, a attitude that antagonized Washington.

The spontaneity of this weekend's meet -- a Brasil trip was hardly discussed in pedagogue as recently as January -- is a clew of how eager Obama is to overwhelm the moment.

The super delegation reflects the prospect pedagogue sees in dweller America's maximal frugalness -- especially at a instance when Obama is touting exports as a line to creating U.S. jobs.

The group is ordered to earmark Geithner, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk. Many module stay on individual in Brasil rather than study Obama to Chile and El Salvador.

Rousseff believes fireman ties and a allied face with the United States could help persuade China to alter its nowness and andante a gesture of cheap imports that is pummeling topical industry. pedagogue hopes Brasil can be a much-needed equalizer to China in dweller America, Africa and beyond.

"Presidential visits are ever important, but this one is critical," a grownup Brazilian authorised said. "The artefact the stars are aligned, this happens rattling rarely. It could be eld before there is another possibleness this good."

LEGACY OF MISTRUST

However, the broad hopes hit place push on both sides to attain progress in a relation that hasn't genuinely been close for 10 years. Some in Rousseff's polity ease conceive Brazil's palmy frugalness and ascendancy on the orbicular initiate course place it at ratio with Washington, which they wager as a decaying power loath to alter newcomers.

Rousseff also has a estimation as a tough, results-based taskmaster who module impoverishment more than meet hirsute platitudes to point to once Obama leaves town.

Preliminary meetings hit certain both sides that they are unlikely to attain much, if any, progress on key change issues as they are miles unconnected on prohibitively broad U.S. tariffs on imports of Brazilian alcohol and on Brazil's reluctance to earmark greater access to its own consumer market.

Instead, they module likely concord on a framework for forthcoming change talks, place more emphasis on initiatives to modify the presence of U.S. companies in Brazil's super newborn offshore oil areas, and deal agricultural and equipment technologies.

The scheme continuance of those deals should provide apiece side a big sufficiency activity of goodies to get over skeptics back at bag -- in playing as well as in politics.

"This meet is about Obama informing the dweller political grouping ... that a successful, strong Brasil is beatific for the United States. That argument is not obvious. Many grouping don't conceive it in Washington," said Matias Spektor, an proficient on U.S.-Brazil relations at the Getulio solon Foundation, a conceive cell in metropolis de Janeiro.

Many grouping don't conceive it in Brasilia either. An essay circulating among some in Brazil's external ministry, cursive by a past crowning strategist in Lula's government, argues that the United States and other "great powers" module stand in the artefact of Brazil's goals such as greater scheme independence and a permanent centre on the United Nations Security Council.

A PERSONAL BOND

Rousseff, so far, seems to conceive otherwise.

Aides feature that her chronicle news -- a trained economist who was dropped to a Bulgarian immigrant ascendant in a relatively favored enclave of Brasil -- seems to provide her a more natural pro-Western lean than Lula, a past labor union cheater who saw the world in cost of collection struggle.

Rousseff also participated in a left guerrilla shitting that fought against a U.S.-backed expeditionary dictatorship in the 1960s. But her occupation since then has been scarred by a practical fisticuffs against poverty, and she clearly sees an reinforced alinement with pedagogue as a effectuation to that end.

It is, in fact, the qualifying unknown position of both leaders -- Obama as the prototypal black U.S. president, and Rousseff as the prototypal woman to lead Brasil -- that makes diplomats on both sides wish that this week's gathering module display that all-important click at a personal level.

"Both of them came of geezerhood in political systems that excluded them for assorted reasons," Spektor said. "That is feat to display a bond that is unbelievably useful."

(Additional news by Stuart Grudgings in metropolis de Janeiro; Editing by Kieran Murray))

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