BRAZIL STANDS FIRM ON INSPECTIONS, IAEA BACKS DOWN

NotiSur

     Brazil appears to have won a months-long stare-down with
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding full
access to its nuclear-energy program.  IAEA inspectors arrived
at a Brazilian nuclear-development site on Oct. 19 with the
understanding that they would be permitted to see less than
they had been bargaining for.  Putting a best face on the
limitation, an agency spokesperson in Vienna said the
inspectors would not need total access.
     The IAEA, in backing down, is treading a fine political
line in giving Brazil some slack on much the same issue it is
pressing Iran on.  Brazil took the opportunity to emphasize
its persuasive powers with official comments that the agency
had become "more flexible."  Seeking to offset the statement,
IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming said, "We will not
compromise on our fundamental technical requirements that will
allow us to ensure there is no diversion of nuclear materials
out of that plant."
     
Protecting industrial secrets
     Brazil's argument for resisting has been that it cannot
allow the inspectors to see the hulls of centrifuges where
uranium is purified because it has developed technology that
is 30% more efficient and 25% more cost effective than that
used in US enrichment plants.  The issue is the risk that the
Brazilian technology might be stolen.  At the heart of the new
technology is an electromagnetic technique that reduces
friction.  Thus, the three inspectors entered the Resende
plant northwest of Rio de Janiero under restrictions.
     Far from being chastised for its attitude by the US,
Brazil, an outspoken, though lately inconsistent, champion of
nonproliferation, recently got a boost from US Secretary of
State Colin Powell.  On a visit to Brazil in early October,
Powell said he is confident Brazil has no plans to develop
nuclear weapons.  At stake for Brazil is UN permission to
begin operating the plant to enrich uranium.
     
Powell softens threat from US right
     Powell's statement also somewhat mitigates previous
statements from the US characterizing Brazil as part of a
Latin "axis of evil," along with Cuba and Venezuela.  Henry
Hyde (R-IL), chair of the House International Relations
Committee, used that phrase in describing President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva as a "pro-Castro radical," while
Constantine Menges, former US President Ronald Reagan's
security director for Latin American affairs and former
National Security Council member, said this "new axis" is
linked to Iraq and Iran.  The significance of Menges'
statement is that holdovers from that administration, Otto
Reich and Elliott Abrams, have had key roles in the current US
administration's Latin American policy.
     Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos said in an
exclusive interview with Folha de Sao Paulo, "We want the IAEA
safeguards.  We want to facilitate their work, but we want to
do so in an alternative manner--something that wasn't in our
previous proposal, nor full visual inspection."
     An unnamed Brazilian official said that Brazil proposed
in September that the agency could inspect the tubes leading
to and from the centrifuges, but that the machines themselves
would be shielded from view by panels, approximately 2 meters
in height, that surround them.  The panels would be lowered
slightly to reveal the tubes.
     Brazil's stated use for the plant is to enrich uranium to
low--less than weapons grade--levels to produce electricity
and free the country from the need to import the fuel for
power generation.  Brazil is the world's fourth-largest
producer of uranium, well able to supply its own needs and to
export the refined product.
     
A world power needs nukes
     But the country also has more far-reaching global
aspirations.  It is seeking a permanent seat on the UN
Security Council, and officials have expressed the belief that
being a potential nuclear power would strengthen their
position.  In January 2003, then minister of science and
technology Roberto Amaral, Campos' predecessor, said Brazil
could not afford to renounce any form of scientific knowledge,
"whether the genome, DNA, or nuclear fission."  The Lula
administration distanced itself from the statement, but Lula
had said, addressing the question just months before Amaral's
statement, "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot
while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?"
     Brazil's 1988 Constitution forbids nuclear weapons, but
that prohibition has not diminished speculation that a nuclear
arsenal is in Brazil's future.  A recent Science Magazine
article said that the Resende plant "will have the potential
to produce enough 235U to make five to six implosion-type
warheads per year.  By 2010, as capacity rises, it could make
enough every year for 26 to 31 and by 2014 enough for 53 to
63."  The article claims that even if the plant produces only
fuel-grade uranium (3.5%), more than half the work toward
making the weapons-grade product (90%) will already have been
done, giving Brazil the power to make nuclear weapons before
the world can react.
     While acknowledging there is little evidence that Brazil
actually intends to become a nuclear power, the article points
out that, if Brazil is allowed to proceed, IAEA will have no
grounds to deny equal treatment to Iran, to which the same
dynamics apply.  Under the terms of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) by which IAEA is bound, there is no legal ground
for treating the two countries differently.
     Brazil responded energetically to the prestigious
magazine article with a statement to the press that it would
lodge a diplomatic complaint with the US regarding the
assertion of nuclear capability.  Science Minister Campos also
objected to another innuendo in the piece, that Brazil had not
developed the technology at all but rather was trying to hide
its origin.  The article stated, "In 1996 Brazil arrested
Karl-Heinz Schaab, a former employee of Germany's MAN
Technologie AG, a firm that developed centrifuges for the
European enrichment consortium called Urenco."  It said that
Germany wanted Schaab to prosecute him for selling centrifuge
blueprints to Iraq and that there was evidence he was helping
Brazil as well. "It follows that, if the IAEA inspectors were
to see the Brazilian centrifuges, they might discover that
Urenco's design data had been transferred," said the article. 
     Brazil's Comissao Nacional de Energia Nuclear (CNEN)
called the article "provocative, and with obscure purposes
behind it."  A statement from Industrias Nucleares do Brasil
called the story "speculative."
     The speculation, however, was not altogether without some
basis in fact.  The Brazilian navy has admitted that Schaab,
who had lived for years in Brazil eluding German authorities,
had worked on "ultrasecret" projects for the military.  Nor
was there anything particularly original in Science's
analysis.  Writing in The New York Times in June, Brent
Scowcroft noted, "Once enrichment capability exists, a major
barrier to producing a nuclear weapon virtually vanishes.  The
IAEA condemnation is an indication that the world may be on
the verge of a major breakdown of the nonproliferation regime,
to say nothing of a huge new source of instability in a
critically important region."
     Scowcroft was alluding to Iran as well as to Brazil with
that observation, but on the specific issue of Brazil's
nuclear efforts, he wrote, "Put simply, the way Brazil is
dealt with could prove to be one of the keys to dealing with
the Iranian nuclear problem, either by persuading Tehran to
abandon its nuclear weapon ambitions or by rallying the
international community to crack down on Iran if it does not. 
We therefore should make the same offer to Brazil as to Iran
and make clear the consequences if Brazil turns down that
offer."
     It would appear from Brazil's recent success with the
IAEA, that Latin America's most powerful country has grown
beyond the fear of "consequences."  Brasilia awaits the
Agency's report to determine whether it has won a battle or a
war.  [Sources: The New York Times, 07/20/90, 06/24/04; The
San Francisco Examiner, 07/27/04; Xinhuanet, 10/18/04;
Reuters, 10/05/04, 10/20/04; BBC News, 10/20/04; Associated
Press, 10/18/04, 10/22/04; Science, 10/22/04; La Opinion (Los
Angeles), Notimex, 10/25/04]