LatinNews Daily Report - 15 August 2013

Brazil: On 13 August the US Secretary of State John Kerry met his Brazilian counterpart, Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota, in his first official visit to Brazil as secretary of state as part of his tour of the region. During the meeting Kerry staunchly defended US intelligence gathering methods, unapologetically insisting that they are “legal” and have “helped protect Americans and other people, including Brazilians, all over the world". Kerry added that Brazil and other countries would be provided with detailed and proper explanations about the US methods, in the wake of the recent allegations made by the US whistleblower, Edward J. Snowden. “Brazil is owed answers and will get them”, Kerry said, stating that “Brazil and other countries will understand exactly what we are doing, why and how - and we will work together to make sure that whatever is done is done in a way that respects our friends and our partners”. Patriota nonetheless said the US methods risked casting a "shadow of suspicion" over bilateral relations and insisted that the Brazilian government of President Dilma Rousseff considered the alleged US spying activities in Brazil an affront to Brazilian sovereignty. "We need to stop practices that violate the sovereignty [of nations], relations of trust between States and individual liberties", Patriota said, adding that "Today we face a new type of challenge in our relations, a challenge related to the news of interception of the electronic and telephone communications of Brazilians…If this challenge is not resolved satisfactorily, we run the risk of casting a shadow of distrust over our work".  As a result of the public indignation over the spying allegations in Brazil, Brazilian senators on the same day called on the Rousseff government not to award a multi-billion dollar deal with the US firm Boeing for the supply of up to 35 new fighter jets to the Brazilian air force – a potential deal for which the US vice-president Joe Biden lobbied during his visit to Brazil in May. The bilateral tensions come as President Rousseff prepares to make an official visit to Washington in October, the first such visit by a Brazilian president in 25 years.

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