JERUSALEM – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Thursday with Brazil’s Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he brought him up to date on the regional situation and his latest initiative to revive the peace process with Israel.

Abbas presented Nunes with his proposal to hold an international conference in mid-2018 as a first step toward unblocking the Middle East peace process, from which would emerge a “multilateral international mechanism” that would facilitate negotiations with Israel, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Abbas thanked Brazil, which recognized the Palestinian state in 2010, for its support of the Palestinian cause and expressed his interest in strengthening bonds with the South American giant.

For his part, Nunes, who is on an official visit to Palestine after concluding a two-day visit to Israel, reaffirmed his country’s position supporting the two-state solution and stated that his government wants to strengthen its bilateral relations with Palestine.

Nunes also met Thursday with his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, and with Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, with whom he discussed the impact of the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the future of the peace process.

During the meeting, they discussed how to strengthen cooperation in sectors such as agriculture, energy, education and health, as well as in the economic sphere, the latter through the importation of Palestinian products, as Al-Maliki proposed, to encourage the Palestinian economy and facilitate its independence.

The Palestinian foreign minister also called for a boycott of products manufactured in Israeli settlements established in occupied territory.

Nunes will wrap up his official visit to the West Bank on Friday.