More soldiers needed in Amazon -Brazil minister

www.alertnet.org 14 Mar 2003 23:50 By Axel Bugge

BRASILIA, Brazil, March 14 (Reuters) - Brazil's military presence in the massive Amazon needs to be beefed up with soldiers and aircraft to guard a region "where there are operations by clandestine forces," Defense Minister Jose Viegas said on Friday.

Viegas said the 24,000 soldiers based in Brazil's Amazon jungle -- an area of 1.54 million square miles (4.1 million sq km) which is larger than western Europe -- need to be increased "to give preventive protection to our empty spaces."

"We have airspace that needs to be guarded, it is a region where there is some instability, where there are operations by clandestine forces," Viegas said in an interview with Reuters.

"In this sense, Brazil's military presence is insufficient because we need a robust presence along rivers, the access points to our neighbors, the capacity for quick movement of ground forces and an air presence compatible with the necessity of surveillance," he said.

Latin America's largest country has long worked to clamp down on drug and arms traffickers, illegal loggers and miners operating in its Amazon. Brazil's Amazon borders on seven countries, including war-torn Colombia.

Troops have been gradually transferred to the Amazon from the south -- where Brazil traditionally had its greatest military presence because of regional rivalry with neighboring Argentina.

Viegas said these transfers would continue "gradually, to the extent that we have the resources."

The minister -- who was Brazil's ambassador to Russia under the previous government before joining the Cabinet of new center-left President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- said he was not worried about Colombian Marxist rebels in the Amazon.

He said incursions by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known as FARC -- into Brazil were infrequent. "There were one or two episodes in recent years," he said. "The FARC have no interest in getting close to us."

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe visited Brazil last week, when Lula pledged "total solidarity" with Colombia's fight against rebels and drug trafficking. The FARC denies smuggling drugs but admits to "taxing" coca -- the raw material used to make cocaine.

Brazil is a major market for Colombia's cocaine, much of it smuggled through the Amazon.

Turning to the so-called triple frontier region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, Viegas said "there is no proof, or evidence of actions, by terrorists in the region."

"We have worries about terrorist acts, the same worries that any country should have," he said. "But we do not consider ourselves targets, nor actors, nor do we shelter (terrorist) actors."