Brazil to Limit Uranium Plant Access as Powell Visits (Update1)

[seemslikeadream]

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil will limit United Nations' access to a uranium enrichment plant as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visits the country to press for unimpeded inspections, the country's ambassador in Washington said.

Brazil will bar the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from parts of the plant to protect secret technology to make fuel for nuclear power generation, Ambassador Roberto Abdenur, 62, said in an interview. Powell, 67, will discuss inspections in a visit to Brazil slated to include meetings with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim tomorrow, Abdenur said.

``The issue is not if, but how'' the plant will be inspected, Abdenur, Brazil's former representative to the UN agency, known as IAEA, said by telephone yesterday from his Washington home. ``We have a right to preserve our technological achievements.''

The U.S. and UN are concerned Brazil's restrictions on inspections will embolden Iran to limit access to its nuclear programs just as inspectors try to uncover secret bomb-making plans, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said. U.S. President George W. Bush and his opponent in the presidential race, John Kerry, have made nuclear proliferation a central foreign policy issue in this year's election campaign.

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http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=ax4VxXgg_wHY&refer=latin_america

[Don Claybrook]

1. OK, war with Brazil. Where should we put them in line?

Do we attack after we're done with Iran, North Korea, Pakistan? Or should we wedge them in somewhere so as to have a logistically easier war, being that they're in our back yard?

Or maybe we could just quit picking on defenseless countries so that other countries don't get the idea that the only way to defend themselves from the US is by becoming a nuclear power.

[struggle4progress]

2. A vote for Bush is a vote for nuclear proliferation. eom

<edit: grammar>