MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian general questions Lula da Silva’ stance on the Amazon

Retired general Rocha Paiva downplayed significance of the US/Colombian bases controversy.

The Brazilian government magnified the importance of the deployment of US troops in Colombian military bases, according to Brazilian retired Army general Luiz Eduardo Rocha Paiva who is also a lecturer in strategic affairs.

“To express concern over (Brazilian) Amazon sovereignty because of the US forces in Colombian bases is to touch on a collateral issue to the detriment of what is essential”, said the retired general in an article published in the O Estado do Sao Paulo.

“Brazil is missing focus and ideological independence in the issue of the bases”, he added.

Brazilian president Lula da Silva expressed concern to his Colombian peer Alvaro Uribe over the deployment of US forces and equipment in seven Colombian bases and even called US President Barack Obama to talk about the controversy.

The issue will be main subject of an extraordinary Unasur summit agenda Friday in Argentina.

The military officer said that even if Brazil is cable of impeding the deployment of those US forces in Colombia, “it would not contribute much to the security of the Brazilian Amazon”.

The US military bases, according to Rocha Paiva are but “the tip of the iceberg” and not the real menace pending over Brazilian sovereignty in the more than four million square kilometres of Amazon territory.

The Non Government Organizations, NGO, from “European metropolis, not from Iberia” are the real threat for Brazilian interests in the Amazon, as well as the Indian reservations with no boundaries, writes Rocha Paiva in the Sao Paulo newspaper.

In the article the general also criticizes the Brazilian government “for not having expressed and opinion when Venezuela president Hugo Chavez proposed to Russia the establishment of military bases in Venezuelan territory”.