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US diplomat says president opposes country’s permanent membership and will avoid topic during March visit

[Translation of an article from Estadão of São Paulo for February 6. See original here and related articles here and here.]

By Denise Chrispim Marin

United States President Barack Obama is not likely to bring up support for Brazil’s membership in the UN Security Council during his visit to the country in March. The White House and US diplomats are working to skirt inevitable embarassing questions [on the topic] from the press in order to avoid damage to their project of relaunching bilateral relations…

According to a State Department source, any change in Washington’s position is a remote possibility. It would be a “miracle.” As far as the US government is concerned, Brazil committed a “mortal sin” in June when it voted against a Security Council resolution on new sanctions against Iran.

The Brazilian action was more serious than its insistent attempts to reach a nuclear accord with Iran because “it compromised the very credibility of the system” and revealed signs of interference by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former Chancellor Celso Amorim in the most sensitve foreign policy decisions. “It was a blunder,” the source said.

It is still not clear to the State Department whether the administration of Dilma Rousseff, as a continuation of the Lula administration, will continue on the same path in foreign affairs.

The doubt will be resolved on the 23rd when Foreign Minister Antônio Patriota will make his first visit to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.

This will be the first opportunity for dialogue between the US and Brazil on restructuring the Security Council, which is still pending in the UN.

Embassy reported Micheletti took advantage of political crisis to sign lucrative contracts

[Translation of an article from El País of Madrid, Spain, for January 29. See original article here and leaked cables, in English, here, here, here, here, here and here.]

By Francisco Peregil

In the 250,000 Wikileaks documents, the expression “banana republic” appears 51 times. Diplomats from countries like Turkey, Russia, Morocco and Spain (Miguel Ángel Moratinos in March, 2004) made clear to their counterparts from the United States that their countries were not banana republics. And yet in the most recent case of a coup d’état in Latin America, the concept is just below the surface in many telegrams but it does not appear at all.

The cables drafted in the United States embassy in Honduras after the June 28, 2009, coup against President Manuel Zelaya display everything that is usually associated with a country with no reliable institutions and under the shadow of the United States: a politician, Roberto Micheletti, who occupied the presidency in the name of honesty and in his despotism had to be threatened with revocation of his visa before he would surrender his position. Until the last minute, Micheletti, according the the embassy, took advantgage of the crisis the coup d’état had provoked to arrange crooked contracts. (more…)