Brazil Wrestles with Amazon Fears as Fires Rage on
4/3/98
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Title: Brazil Wrestles with Amazon Fears as Fires Rage on
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/3/98
Byline: Tracey Ober
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil tried to overcome old fears of foreign intervention
in the Amazon on Thursday as President Fernando Henrique Cardoso summoned
the armed forces to consider a U.N. offer of help against fires ravaging
the rainforest.
Cardoso was due to meet with his army, air force and navy ministers, along
with other members of the cabinet, to find ways of improving efforts to
contain the flames consuming large areas of northern Roraima state.
Fires set by subsistence farmers have burned out of control since January
in savannah near Brazil's border with Venezuela. The flames are now
pressing into jungle that is dry from a drought blamed on the El Nino
weather phenomenon.
Estimates for how much land has either burned or is at risk vary from 2,300
square miles (6,000 square km) to as high as 11,500 square miles (30,000
square km), an area the size of Belgium, according to government
researchers.
The United Nations' Department of Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday it
was ready to send in a team of firefighting specialists to help Brazil
assess the damage and lay the groundwork for mobilizing international
assistance.
"All international help, coordinated by the Brazilian government, will be
welcome," said presidential spokesman Sergio Amaral. He said Brazil,
despite its huge Amazon territory, lacked the technology needed to tackle
major fires in tropical forests.
But the army general in charge of an 800-man firefighting team in Roraima
said Brazil could do without the U.N.
"For the time being we don't need any more outside help because we have
already mobilized national personnel," said Gen.Luiz Edmundo Maia de
Carvalho.
Argentine and Venezuelan firefighters are also involved in Brazil's biggest
ever firefighting effort.
For decades, Brazil's armed forces have treated the Amazon as a national
security issue.
The military dictatorship of 1964-85 made colonization of the vast
rainforest a priority and built dozens of roads through the jungle to make
it less remote.
When Brazil created the Portugal-sized reservation of the Yanomami Indians
on the border with Venezuela in 1990, there was stiff opposition from the
army.
In 1994, a decision to buy a U.S.-designed radar and air surveillance
system for the Amazon also upset the generals.
"It (the Amazon) is a question of sovereignty," said David Fleischer, a
politics professor at Brasilia University. "The armed forces have a phobia
about outside forces taking over and the U.N. declaring the Indians as
independent nations."
While the government ministers in Brasilia prepared to consider their
options, Carvalho said his firefighting operation in Roraima was starting
to work.
He said firefighters would not be able to put out all the fires, but they
were gaining ground in controlling them.
"We are winning victories in some places, but fires continue to appear in
others," Carvalho said.
The priorities were saving lives, protecting communities and preserving
grazing land for livestock, he said.
"The firefight is well organized and has gained a lot of ground," said a
spokesman for Argentina's firefighters. "We are optimistic because the
number of men keeps increasing."
(C) Reuters Limited 1998.