Brazil assures international agency it won't make nuclear weapons

newsobserver.com Thursday, January 9, 2003 5:18PM EST By MICHAEL ASTOR, ASSOCIATED PRESS

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Brazil said Thursday it plans to pursue a broad range of nuclear research, but has no intention of making atomic weapons.

The statement came in response to comments this week by Science and Technology Minister Roberto Amaral, which stoked fears in some circles that Brazil might develop a nuclear weapon. "The Ministry of Science and Technology emphatically manifests its position against any activity related to the production of nuclear arms," the ministry said in a statement. "We are committed to scientific and technological development in all areas of knowledge, and placing that knowledge at the service of human progress and the construction of a more just society."

In an interview aired Sunday night on the British Broadcasting Corp., Amaral said Brazil "can't renounce any form of scientific knowledge, whether the genome, DNA or nuclear fission."

Although Amaral prefaced his comments by saying the country had no intention of making a nuclear weapon, many feared the new government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva might reinvigorate Brazil's nuclear energy program, Latin America's most advanced.

The government had originally said it would clarify its position with the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Brazil's Foreign Ministry said Thursday it considered the ministry statement sufficient clarification.

Presidential spokesman Andre Singer sounded a similar theme, saying "the government is in favor of research in these areas for peaceful ends only and exclusively."

During last year's presidential campaign, Silva criticized the nuclear nonproliferation treaty as being biased in favor of the United States in a speech before a group of retired military officers.

"I want a strong Brazil, respected economically, technically and militarily," he said at the time, adding that he planned to reactivate a $100 million plan to build a nuclear submarine.

Brazil, which has two functioning nuclear reactors and a third in the works, has signed the nonproliferation treaty.