There goes the neighborhood

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A senior official in the left-wing government that took power last week has set off a furor here and alarmed neighboring countries by arguing that Brazil, Latin America's largest nation, should acquire the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon.

"Brazil is a country at peace, that has always preserved peace and is a defender of peace, but we need to be prepared, including technologically," Roberto Amaral, the newly appointed minister of science and technology, said in an interview with the Brazilian service of the BBC that was broadcast on Sunday night. "We can't renounce any form of scientific knowledge, whether the genome, DNA or nuclear fission," he added.

Mr. Amaral's remarks, coming as the United States faces a nuclear crisis with North Korea and is preparing for war with Iraq over its weapons programs, has reawakened debate over Brazil's own nuclear energy and research program, the most advanced in Latin America.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was quick to distance the new president from Mr. Amaral's pronouncement that "mastery of the atomic cycle is important" to Brazil, saying that the minister's remarks were not an expression of official policy. "The government favors research in this area solely and exclusively for peaceful purposes," the spokesman, André Singer, told reporters at a news briefing in Brasília.

Heck, I better get me some nukes while I'm at it. I mean, it's prefectly legit with the Second Amendment and all, right?