Ibero-American News Digest
Brazil-India Discussions Deepen South-South Cooperation
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim visited India Oct. 20-21, accompanied by 12 representatives of major industrial and services interests of Brazil, including construction and infrastructure, mining, metallurgy, aviation, transport, and logistics. Amorim met with the Indian Minister of External Affairs, Yashwant Sinha, privately, and then co-chaired with Sinha the first India-Brazil Joint Commission meeting, where discussions ranged from India's offer to launch Brazilian micro-satellites and to sell Brazil India's super-computer (Param series), to furthering coordination between the two countries in World Trade Organization negotiations (both India and Brazil want to strengthen the Group of 22 which was pulled together at the WTO Cancun meeting), and in the battle to reform the United Nations.
India's External Affairs Minister told reporters that Brazil-Indian relations are entering a completely new dimension. President Lula da Silva was invited to participate as the chief guest at India's national holiday, Republic Day, next January, an honor his Foreign Minister happily accepted. The Indian government also accepted Brazil's invitation for Prime Minister Vajpayee to visit, at a date to still be determined.
Most interesting, is the report that the Brazilians expressed an interest in Indian assistance in building up the railway infrastructure in Brazil. Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna reported that "the Brazilian side mentioned that they were looking at an integration of South America in which a lot of infrastructure has to be created there, and Indian railway could have a possible role."
Also discussed, was the usefulness of deepening the tripartite cooperation between India, South Africa, and Brazil launched last June in Brasilia. Amorim told reporters that this "is the first case of systematically seeking the tripartite cooperation among countries of the south, and I think it will be a very good example, if it flourishes." Amorim proposed that the preferential trade accord, now being negotiated between India and the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), be extended to include South Africa. "South-South trade is an alternative to trade with countries in the north," he stated in his address to a meeting organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci). "The G-3 (India, South Africa and Brazil) offer a new opportunity. It will also give a good signal to the world as we would be seen as acting, irrespective of what happens at the WTO."
War Turned Iraq into Hotbed of Terrorism, Says Brazil's Foreign Minister
Iraq was also on the agenda, when the Foreign Ministers of Brazil and India met on Oct. 20. Although nothing public was reported from these discussions, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim commented to the Hindu afterward: "From what I know, the Saddam Hussein government could be accused of many things ... but it was not a hotbed of terrorism. Now, because of the lack of government, the lack of clear legitimate authority, apparently it is more prone to these things [terrorist acts] than it was before."
Success of Brazil-China Satellite Leads Way to New Endeavors
The second Chinese-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) was successfully placed in its designated orbit, after being launched on a Chinese Long March rocket from the Chinese Taiyuan Launch Center on Oct. 21. This was the second satellite developed jointly by the two countries under the CBERS partnership. In total, the program is to develop four satellites, of increasing complexity and sophistication, for the collection of images, which will allow both countries to monitor land resources changes in their respective countries; survey arable lands, pastures, and grasslands; discover natural and human disasters; offer information on aquatic farming and environmental pollution; explore mineral resources, etc. CBERS-I was launched in October 1999, and the next two satellites are to be produced and launched in 2006 and 2007.
"Today is an historic day in Brazil-China relations," Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Roberto Amaral told a press conference following the successful launch. Brazil's cooperation with China in space is a model of South-South cooperation, which not only contributed to the progress in science and technology, but also benefitted the economies of both countries. Brazil is now independent in the collection of images of its national territory, and will save the $6 million/year it was paying to buy images collected by a French satellite, Amaral pointed out.
New partnerships with China on other high-technology projects are possible. Amaral said Brazil is satisfied with its space cooperation with China, and hopes to extend it to other areas of scientific research, such as the development of nuclear energy, new materials and animal vaccination, colored-cotton production and agriculture.
Among its more esoteric spin-offs, the successful launching of this second rocket will send the Hudson Institute's Constanine Menges into low-earth orbit, albeit a highly unstable one. The July issue of the Hudson Institute's news summary service, "The Americas Report," made clear the neo-cons are watching this Brazilian-Chinese scientific cooperation closely.
Orthodox Economics Drove Bolivia to the Abyss
Newly named Bolivian President Carlos Mesa told Argentina's Clarin that "the abyss is still there," and his country still faces the possibility of "total shipwreck." Asked by Clarin if his government would "bet" on the neo-liberal prescriptions followed by his overthrown predecessor Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, President Mesa responded that "to bet on orthodoxy is insanity. The orthodox model no longer has any sustainability." He, however, made clear that Bolivia has very little maneuvering room to take what he called "spectacular ideological decisions." He has given no indication he has any idea of what steps should even be taken, even as he warned that the risk Bolivia is running, "is that of total shipwreck. If Bolivia loses this opportunity, if it does not understand that our destiny is at stake, we could enter into a grave crisis," he told Clarin. (See In-Depth, for full story.)
Separatism Rears Head in Argentina, Too
As business leaders in the gas-rich state of Tarija in Bolivia threaten to declare autonomy from their nation, if the national government blocks the state's plans to sell gas to the United States via Chile, at whatever price the market will bear, a similar-minded Governor of the Argentina province of Neuquen stepped forward to grab the business for his province, instead.
Neuquen Gov. Jorge Sobisch is asking the Spanish Repsol-YPF company, which was one of three foreign companies involved in the Bolivian gas deal, to "refloat" an earlier plan to export natural gas from Neuquen to the state of Georgia in the United States. In an Oct. 15 meeting with Argentina's Ambassador to the United States, Jose Octavio Bordon, Sobisch insisted that "the most important issue we have with the United States is gas."
Opportunist Sobisch also happens to be pushing a "regionalization" plan, by which two or three existing Patagonian provinces would be merged into one, with the very strong implication that eventually, Patagonia should become an independent country. Since much of Argentina's oil, gas, and strategic mineral wealth is located here, Sobisch figures there's no reason for the Patagonia to be "burdened" by remaining part of a country, many of whose other provinces are impoverished.
Soros-Transparency International Agent Appointed to Argentine Supreme Court
Transparency International asset Eugenio Zaffaroni has been approved as a magistrate of Argentina's Supreme Court, boosting Justice Minister Gustavo Beliz's drive to "reform," i.e., annihilate, the country's national institutions under the guise of "combatting corruption." Beliz also acts openly on behalf of Transparency International. For years, Zaffaroni, a proponent of drug legalization, has been a key fixture in the campaign to dismantle Argentina's security institutions. In 1999, he was also brought in to "reform" the Buenos Aires police force, which historically has been linked to the province's Peronist political machinery. In an interview with Radio Mitre earlier this year, Zaffaroni bragged that he could become "the brain of the Judicial Branch."
Most revealing is the gushing praise for Zaffaroni, published in the Narco News Bulletin, part of George Soros's drug-legalization apparatus. Narco News reported on Oct. 17 that Zaffaroni had written the prologue, together with LaRouche hater and former Montonero terrorist Horacio Verbitsky, of the pro-drug book Drugs Between Prohibition's Harm and Failure: New Perspectives in the Decriminalization and Legalization Debate. According to Narco News, the book, published by the Argentina Harm Reduction Association (ARDA), "was part of a national campaign titled, 'Just Say No to the War Against Drug Users.'" Zaffaroni argued in the prologue that "absolute prohibition" of drug use, "justifies police repression without any legal limits."
Argentine Creditors Demand Their Pound of Flesh
Argentina's creditors vow they will not accept the government's debt restructuring plan, which includes a 75% writedown. As Deputy Finance Minister Guillermo Nielsen embarked on an international tour on Oct. 20, to meet with creditors in the United States, Europe, and Japan, representatives of these groups were telling the media that there is no chance they will accept the plan. "The 75% haircut is unacceptable," said Gianfrancesco Rizzuti of the Italian Association of Banks. Knut Hansen of Germany's Agency for the Restructuring of Argentine Bonds demanded that "there be a change in the proposal.... There can't be a 75% haircut." Kenneth Dart, of the EM vulture fund, which has won a $700 million judgment against Argentina in a New York court, threatened that if the government's proposal isn't significantly "improved," Argentina "will be excluded from the capital markets, with the resulting greater damage for the country's economy and its people." Dart, who gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid U.S. tax laws, added that, in the end, should the government of President Nestor Kirchner not "cooperate," he will squeeze every penny out of the country that he possibly canwith the help of the New York court. Thousands of other creditors hope to use the legal system in their countries, to force Argentina to paywhich, of course, it cannot do.
Privatized Utilities Give Argentine the 'California Treatment'
Argentina is also under siege from greedy European utility companies which bought up Argentina's utility firms, during the privatization binge of the 1990s, and are now demanding rate hikes from the government of President Nestor Kirchner. After an Oct. 16 electricity blackout that affected 450,000 residents of Buenos Aires, and a water cutoff on Oct. 19, the government accused the utility companies of blackmail and extortion, and warned they would be sanctioned to the full extent of the law, if it were proven they had deliberately caused these cutoffs in service.
Most vociferous is France's EDF, which owns Argentina's Edenor. EDF executive Gerard Creuzet whined to Clarin's Paris correspondent, that his company is being mistreated by the Kirchner government, and he said EDF would not invest any more money in the country, unless it got a rate hike of at least 37% to compensate for losses suffered when their dollar debts were forceably converted to pesos in 2002.
After complaining that EDF had lost $300 million in the country, Clarin reminded him of how much the company had made during the free-market heyday of the 1990s. Creuzet could only grumble that the "catastrophe of 2002" had wiped out everything that EDF had earned during the decade of the 1990s.
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