Brazil backs off statement by minister on nuclear arms

'Axis of evil' would expand, expert warns www.globeandmail.com By JEFF SALLOT Friday, January 10, 2003 – Print Edition, Page A8

OTTAWA -- Brazil is scrambling to clean up the diplomatic fallout from a suggestion by its rookie Science Minister that the country needs to know how to build nuclear bombs.

The comments -- since "clarified" by Brazilian diplomats -- tripped alarms at the United Nations and in Washington, where jittery officials are trying to deal with nuclear crises in North Korea and Iraq, and hardly need a new one in South America.

For Brazil or others, hinting about going nuclear as part of a strategy to win respect internationally is bound to backfire, some experts said.

"This unfortunate statement has done political damage," said Luis Bitencourt, director of the Brazil Project at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center.

Any hint that the newly elected government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is trying to revive Brazil's nuclear ambitions would be exploited by suspicious U.S. right-wingers, who would lump Brazil in with U.S. President George W. Bush's so-called axis of evil, Mr. Bitencourt said.

Brazilian officials have to be careful about their words because many UN members remember that the country's military dictatorship tried to develop nuclear weapons, Mr. Bitencourt said. Brazil has the most advanced nuclear-energy and research programs in Latin America.

The furor was set off by a radio interview this week in which Science and Technology Minister Roberto Amaral was asked whether Brazil needs to develop the knowledge to manufacture nuclear weapons.

"We cannot renounce any scientific knowledge -- the knowledge of the genome, the knowledge of DNA, the knowledge of nuclear fission," he said.

Earlier in the interview, Mr. Amaral said Brazil is against nuclear proliferation but cannot erase its knowledge of the technology.

The minister said that although Brazil is a country of peace, it needs modern armed forces with "high technological development."

When the interview was broadcast on the Portuguese-language service of the British Broadcasting Corp., it set off alarms at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA, the UN's watchdog on nuclear-proliferation questions, is involved with crises in Iraq, where its inspectors are looking for evidence of a nuclear-weapons program, and with North Korea, which recently expelled UN nuclear-program inspectors.

The agency sought clarification from Brazil, and is satisfied that the country intends to adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said last night.

The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations said there has been no change in the country's fundamental commitment to renounce the development of nuclear weapons.

The ministry noted that the Brazilian constitution prohibits bringing nuclear weapons into the country aboard the ships of other countries. Other officials vowed that Brazil favours nuclear research only for peaceful purposes.

Brazil and rival neighbour Argentina halted their nuclear-weapons programs in the mid-1980s. But there are suspicions that at least some Brazilians want the weapons to give the country extra diplomatic heft to match its emergence as an economic power.

During the fall presidential-election campaign, Mr. da Silva criticized the non-proliferation treaty, saying it favours the original nuclear-weapons states -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.