economictimes.indiatimes.com PTI[ FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 2003 12:21:02 PM ]

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has raised the possibility of a summit of interested world leaders on Iraq "to get us out of this crisis" while continuing his efforts to keep the Security Council members united over the issue.

Annan on Thursday welcomed the idea of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for a summit of interested world leaders, not necessarily members of the Council.

But media reports suggest that the US is not enthusiastic and is unlikely to support the idea with diplomats saying it is too late for any summit to make a difference. Besides, there might not be enough time left for such a meeting and it is better not to have it than having a futile one, they say.

However, Annan continued his efforts to bring unity among the members to save the Council from becoming ineffective in a crisis situation and held one-on-one meetings with ambassadors of all 15 member countries. But diplomats doubted it would have any effect on the course of events.

Annan made yet another appeal for united Security Council action in ridding Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction as the Council continued to wrestle whether to give UN inspectors more time or to declare Baghdad in default by next Monday.

"I think what is important is that governments have to find a way of working together," Annan told reporters.

"Regardless of how this crisis or the current issue is resolved, the Council will have to work together, and the member states will have to work together to deal with the situation in Iraq, in Middle East and on many other issues."

Annan said he spoke to British Premier Tony Blair on Monday and he seemed "very genuinely looking" for a compromise and a way forward.

www.brazzil.com March 2003

What would a UK Social Services department make of all this? I guess all the children would be immediately rounded up and shunted off into care, and there would be calls for a Royal Commission to be set up…but we are in Brazil. According to Unicef, there are from seven to eight million kids in worse shape, living or working on the streets.

Mark Ereira

www.nytimes.com By LARRY ROHTER

BRASÍLIA, March 13 — Attacking one of Brazil's most shameful but deeply rooted social problems, the country's new left-wing government has announced a sweeping initiative intended to eliminate slave labor.

The plan calls for stepping up police raids on ranches, logging operations and mines that lure poor and often illiterate peasants into servitude, as well as heavier fines and criminal penalties for offenders.

But the government said it would also seek passage of a constitutional amendment that would allow the seizure of businesses and properties found to employ slave labor and to turn those assets over to the former slaves to run.

"Much more than a law, we need determination and the political will of the state to eradicate slave labor in our country," President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former labor leader, said in announcing the project on Tuesday. "Only in this way can we earn the right to walk in the world with head held high."

The Roman Catholic Church estimates that at any given moment at least 25,000 Brazilian workers are held in debt slavery, most of them in remote areas of the Amazon jungle. Typically, recruiters go to poor rural areas and guarantee peasants good wages and benefits, but renege on those pledges once the laborer has arrived at the jungle workplace and is guarded by gunmen.

"Slavery remains a severe social and economic problem in this country, the result of pitiful people without food or land being duped by false promises and of government policies that have not made the eradication of servitude a priority," said Eduardo Varandas, a federal prosecutor who has brought slavery charges against several ranchers. "The worker ends up stuck with financial obligations he can't ever repay and becomes a slave of his own debt."

Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish chattel slavery, in 1888, and forced labor continued to be common in rural areas in modern times. But government authorities, labor unions and antislavery groups agree that the problem has intensified in recent years as a result of growing economic pressure to develop the Amazon's vast agricultural frontier.

In 1995, at the beginning of his first term of office, Mr. da Silva's predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, announced "a national effort to truly comply with the law" that had abolished slavery here. His government created an enforcement squad that was empowered to punish those who recruit Brazilians into slavery, and between 1995 and 2002 it freed more than 5,000 enslaved workers.

But government inspectors complained that their efforts were hampered by weaknesses in Brazil's legal code. While they have the authority to force employers to pay back wages to enslaved workers, criminal charges have to be referred to the court system, where they are often ignored by apathetic prosecutors or shelved by judges sympathetic to business interests.

In some cases, inspectors have raided the same ranch many times, freeing workers, only to return and find that others have been enslaved. The government intends to discourage that behavior by publishing a list of offenders, who will be denied access to any form of government loans, credits, subsidies or tax benefits, and by prohibiting those found guilty from appealing their convictions while out on bail.

"This is not to combat slavery, because that has already been tried," Nilmário Miranda, the government's human rights secretary, told reporters here. "What we are going to do is do away with slave labor by the end of this government's term of office," in 2006.

The program also calls for a sharp increase in the number of inspectors. The Ministry of Labor says that this year it will hire and train more than 650 new inspectors, who will have good salaries and the untrammeled authority to enforce the law.

In the past, "people have known that they can bribe a labor inspector or a police officer, or a mayor or alderman or member of Congress," Mr. da Silva said. "I want it to be known that those days are over."

www.nytimes.com By LARRY ROHTER

RASÍLIA, March 14 — If crime is getting out of hand and the police cannot control the situation, send in the army. If extra help is needed to build and repair highways, distribute food to the poor or run sports training programs, call on the military.

After nearly two decades on the margins of Brazilian life, the armed forces have been thrust back into the center of things. Since taking office on Jan. 1, the left-wing government here has increasingly been looking to the 185,000 members of the military to perform tasks to advance President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's ambitious social development agenda. Advertisement

When violence ordered by drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro threatened to interfere with this month's Carnival festivities, 3,000 soldiers were sent to maintain order. But that action has set off a growing national debate as to whether restoring or expanding the role of the armed forces is appropriate in a country that lived under a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

"When military rule ended, there was a hiatus in which everything associated with the military and every initiative the dictatorship had taken had to be defenestrated," said Geraldo Cavagnari, a former army colonel and a professor at the Strategic Studies Center at the University of Campinas. "But time has passed, democratic rule is firmly implanted, and we have now entered a period of reflection about the military and the tasks it should undertake."

The new government's penchant for relying on the armed forces is noteworthy given the background of its leaders. During the dictatorship, both the president of Mr. da Silva's Workers' Party, José Genoino, and the man who is now presidential chief of staff, José Dirceu de Oliveira e Silva — to cite just two of many — were members of guerrilla groups that fought the army, and both were eventually jailed.

But as Mr. da Silva's press spokesman, André Singer, said in January, "The president has emphasized that the country needs the involvement of all of society in the tasks of government." Recent pledges made to the International Monetary Fund to reduce spending have left him with little money for the new social programs, like "zero hunger," that he championed as a candidate last year.

Mr. da Silva "made lots of promises, and the military are one of the few resources he has available," said Richard Millett, an American expert on the Latin American military. "They're already on the payroll, they're already in the places they need to be, and they've got discipline. They may not be the first choice, but there is no second choice."

For the most part, military leaders have indicated that they welcome a higher profile, especially if it means that more money from the tight government budget will come their way. Their financial situation has been so difficult recently that the army had to send 44,000 soldiers home last year because it could no longer afford to house and feed them. Flying time for air force pilots has had to be curtailed because of lack of reliable aircraft and spare parts, and even ammunition is scarce.

But others have begun warning of the dangers of an expanded role for the military, some of them already made manifest. During Carnival, an army unit shot and killed a 51-year-old teacher when his car ran a late night roadblock in a dangerous neighborhood. His family is considering legal action, contending that the soldiers should have shot out the tires of his car instead.

"Our generals, who are inundated with material problems in keeping the spirit of their troops high, know that soldiers are not prepared for this kind of combat and that the institutional risk is high," Denise Frossard, a former judge who is now a member of Congress, wrote in an essay published this week in the daily Jornal do Brasil. In addition, she wrote, "the manner in which the armed forces are being employed tramples the Constitution."

The army is withdrawing the troops from Rio, mostly because of a dispute between the federal government and the state governor over broader public security policy questions. But the Rio state security secretary, Josias Quintal, has said he favors stationing troops in the city permanently and expanding their role to include combatting drug trafficking.

Similarly, the transportation minister, Anderson Adauto, has said he envisions army engineering battalions building up to 600 miles of road a year, a throwback to the era of military-built projects like the trans-Amazon highway. He also said he would like to put military officers in charge of procurement at his ministry because he thinks they are honest and the agency currently responsible for that task is not.

Perhaps the most unusual plan involving the military, though, would allow poor children to use the sports facilities at military bases. The program also calls for army drill instructors to train Brazilian athletes for competitions.

"Sports are a powerful instrument of social inclusion," Sports Minister Agnelo Queiroz, a member of the Communist Party of Brazil, said in a recent speech. "The armed forces are in agreement and also enthusiastic about this project."

José Viegas, in his first speech as defense minister in January, said he had no objection to the armed forces taking part "in the noble task of supporting the social development of our country," but only so long as it "does not hamper their principal task, which is the safeguarding of our sovereignty." He declined a request for an interview.

Similar experiments have been tried, with largely unfavorable results, in other Latin American countries where the military is also searching for new, nonpolitical roles. In Venezuela, where the last military dictator was deposed 45 years ago, President Hugo Chávez set up Plan Bolivar 2000, which calls for the military to build schools and roads, operate medical clinics and sell food at subsidized prices in poor areas.

Many senior military officers there opposed involvement, saying it would lead to corruption and the politicization of the armed forces, and indeed both occurred as the program was carried out. In Colombia, using the army alongside the police in counternarcotics efforts has also fomented corruption while undermining discipline and morale.

"The Brazilian military doesn't have the operational capacity to do all of this," Dr. Cavagnari said. "People forget the armed forces were neglected and abandoned for years. If their capacity to perform their main mission is low, then imagine their ability to carry out these complementary missions."

www.forbes.com Reuters, 03.13.03, 5:40 PM ET

BRASILIA, Brazil, March 13 (Reuters) - Brazil's Senate on Thursday approved three new Central Bank directors who had been nominated to the bank's board by the new government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, lawmakers said. Luiz Augusto Candiota, who is replacing Luiz Fernando Figueiredo as monetary policy director, won 60 votes versus six against. Paulo Sergio Cavalheiro, who will become the bank's new oversight director, and Joao Antonio Fleury Teixeira, who will head the bank's administration department, won similar-sized votes, lawmakers said. The three new directors were nominated by the government last month.