Brazil sets off furor over nuclear weapons

www.insidevc.com By New York Times News Service January 9, 2003

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- A senior official in the left-wing government that took power last week has set off a furor here and alarmed neighboring countries by arguing that Brazil, Latin America's largest nation, should acquire the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon.

"Brazil is a country at peace, that has always preserved peace and is a defender of peace, but we need to be prepared, including technologically," Roberto Amaral, the newly appointed Minister of Science and Technology, said in an interview with the Brazilian service of the BBC that was broadcast Sunday night. "We can't renounce any form of scientific knowledge, whether the genome, DNA or nuclear fission," he added.

Amaral's remarks, coming as the United States faces a nuclear crisis with North Korea and is preparing for war with Iraq over its weapons programs, has reawakened debate over Brazil's own nuclear energy and research program, the most advanced in Latin America.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was quick to distance the new president from Amaral's pronouncement that "mastery of the atomic cycle is important" to Brazil, saying that the minister's remarks were not an expression of official policy. "The government favors research in this area solely and exclusively for peaceful purposes," the spokesman, Andre Singer, told reporters at a news briefing in Brasilia.

Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, Brazil's most prominent nuclear physicist and the newly appointed head of the state electrical power utility Eletrobras, said Wednesday: "Brazil does not have, does not need and should not obtain the knowledge of this technology. The bomb is a plague of mankind."

Nevertheless, Amaral's declarations echoed a certain discontent expressed by da Silva as a candidate last year. In a speech here in September, da Silva criticized the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as unjustly favoring the United States and other nations that already had nuclear weapons, asking, "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?"

Da Silva later issued a "clarification" saying Brazil did not intend to develop nuclear weapons. But a dozen members of the U.S. Congress, complaining of his "longstanding relation with and admiration for the Communist dictator and sponsor of terrorism Fidel Castro," sent a letter to President Bush saying da Silva's remarks "raise grave questions concerning the international policies a government of Brazil might pursue under his presidency."

In his inaugural address last week, da Silva, a former factory worker and union leader, said he favored "the democratization of international relations, without any form of hegemony." Brazil already has a joint rocket program with China, and da Silva said his government would also strengthen ties in all areas with regional powers like India, Russia and South Africa.

The Brazilian Constitution, promulgated in 1988, forbids the development of nuclear weapons or their presence here.

That action was taken a year after the government here announced it had developed the technology to enrich uranium, but it was not until Fernando Henrique Cardoso took office in 1995 that Brazil agreed to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Until the mid-1980s, Brazil and its neighbor and traditional rival, Argentina, had programs aimed at developing the ability to produce atomic bombs. But after military dictatorships in both countries gave way to democratic rule, civilian presidents negotiated an end to those programs and began a policy of technical cooperation and exchange of information.

That effort has been so successful that during a visit to India and Pakistan in 2000, Bill Clinton, president at the time, cited Brazil and Argentina as examples for the rest of the developing world to follow. For that reason, Amaral's declarations immediately generated front-page headlines and raised eyebrows in Argentina.

Argentina's president, Eduardo Duhalde, who is scheduled to visit Brazil on Jan. 14, told reporters on Tuesday: "Before making any comment, we need to have a good look at what the Brazilian minister said. Let's say we're in a holding pattern, waiting for further explanation."