The US and Brazil are once more at loggerheads over foreign policy. Mike Hammer, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, called for “more action” from Brazil to pressure Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on 1 June. In a swift and firm riposte Brazil’s foreign minister Antonio Patriota insisted that Brazil’s commitment to supporting the plan of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for settling the Syrian crisis was “perhaps greater than that of the US”. He added that Brazil not only supported the Annan plan but also a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) calling for Assad to allow it to send an independent team, led by a Brazilian, to investigate the massacre of some 100 civilians in the town of Houla on 25 May.
Foreign policy divergences, most notably over Iran, and later Libya, are one of the primary reasons why Washington has withheld unequivocal support for Brazil’s aspirations to fill a seat on the UN Security Council. “We want action on the UN Security Council - and we want Brazil to be a part of that,” Hammer said in a press conference in Washington, calling for Brazil to throw more support behind Annan and make a greater effort to put pressure on Assad. Patriota delivered his response in a joint press conference on 2 June with his Venezuelan peer Nicolás Maduro, who was visiting Brazil to deepen bilateral ties (see box below): Venezuela, it is worth noting, accepts the line peddled by Assad that his government is the victim of a foreign-backed insurgency and that human rights violations have been perpetrated by rebel groups conspiring against the people and the government.
The Brazilian government has been very cautious. It certainly has not aligned itself with Venezuela in expressing unconditional support of the Assad regime but neither has it explicitly condemned a bloody crackdown on dissent by security forces in Syria. Patriota said that Brazil stood full square behind the UN Security Council. “If the Annan mission suggests sanctions should be imposed, such as an arms embargo, Brazil will support it,” he said, but he opposed unilateral sanctions, or actions taken “outside of the authority of this Council”, a prospect raised by the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, if “the Council’s unity is exploded, the Annan plan is dead and this becomes a proxy conflict with arms flowing in from all sides.”
Patriota chose to cite the evaluation of a Brazilian former human rights secretary, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, designated by the UNHRC to lead a UN commission to investigate atrocities in Houla, that military intervention in Syria would be “catastrophic”. Pinheiro, who was recently named by President Dilma Rousseff to sit on the truth commission to examine human rights abuses during Brazil’s dictatorship [WR-12-19], told the national daily O Globo unequivocally in an interview on 1 June that “There is no military solution for the Syrian crisis.” He explained: “Syria is not Libya. Syria’s armed forces function… The Syrian army has 300,000 men. To put that into perspective, this is the same as Brazil’s armed forces, except that we have a population of 200m people.”
Pinheiro added that “the militarisation of the conflict – by foreign intervention or arming the rebel groups – would lead to a civil war with many more victims than the 10,000 so far...” The problem, however, as he himself conceded, is that the alternative - negotiations - “will not be easy as this conflict has an international political complexity greater than others” and that it is very doubtful whether they can avert a civil war: Syria, as Kofi Annan said at the weekend, has reached “a turning point (and) the spectre of all-out civil war, with a worrying sectarian dimension, grows by the day.” If this happens, and the Assad regime perpetrates further human rights abuses (details of another brutal massacre, in the province of Hama, emerged on 6 June), it will be increasingly difficult for Brazil to remain mute.
- Deepening ties with Venezuela
Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota fended off questions about Syria after meeting his Venezuelan peer Nicolás Maduro in Rio de Janeiro. The two men agreed to create a bilateral planning group, made up of different ministries from both countries, to “accelerate integration”. This ‘group of reflection and strategic planning’, Patriota explained, would first meet in Brasília in July where it would cover areas such as infrastructure, trade, agriculture and housing cooperation.
Patriota said the recommendations of the group would help increase bilateral trade, which reached a record US$5.86bn last year (five times greater than in 2003 he noted). He added that he would assist with organising a visit by a Venezuelan business delegation to Brazil in search of investment.
The president of Brazil’s ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), Rui Falcão, declared his “total support” for President Hugo Chávez, ahead of Venezuela’s elections on 7 October, and “any government that doesn’t accept imperialist hegemony”. Maduro profusely thanked the PT for its support during his visit to Brazil. Venezuela’s opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), whose candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski maintains that he would follow the model of the PT’s most famous son, former president Lula da Silva (2003-2010), if he were elected, tried to downplay the significance of the comment, arguing that it was not necessarily representative of the government’s view. The pro-opposition weekly Tal Cual slammed what it described as imperialist interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
- Amazon
Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest annual level since records began in 1988, according to the national institute for space research (Inpe). The announcement that deforestation totalled 6,418 square kilometres in the year up to 31 July 2011 (down 8% on the same period a year earlier) seemed timed to coincide with Brazil’s hosting of the UN conference on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20) between 20 and 22 June.
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