Palestra do Ministro Celso Amorim na Academia Diplomática de Viena: "O Brasil e a Nova Ordem Internacional" [em inglês] – Viena, 21 de junho de 2010

Brazil and the New International Order

Part I: Memories of Vienna and the Diplomatic Academy

Ambassador Hans Winkler, Director of the Diplomatic Academy,

My dear Professor and teacher, Dr. Ernest Florian Winter,

My good friends Ambassador Julio Zelner, Ambassador here in Vienna, and his wife, also Ambassador, Marília Zelner, Ambassador to Bratislava,

(I think we give good example to other diplomatic services of how to keep couples together),

Ambassador Guerreiro, our Representative to the IAEA,

All my good friends Ambassadors, friends, some of whom I have seen several times,

You can imagine how moved I am, not only with this homage, but also with the fact of coming back here. I must say I did not expect to see Professor Winter and especially to see him in such a good shape. I wish some of us can come to his age and be the young man that he still is.

It may be a bit boring for some of the students and Ambassadors present here, but I have to indulge on some nostalgia. It’s very difficult not to do so.

I came here as a young man, a very young man actually. I was 24 years-old – just one year older than my youngest collaborator – and I had just graduated from the Brazilian Diplomatic Academy, the Rio Branco Institute. I brought a wife and she brought a child in her womb. My first son was born here at Rudolfina Haus. This is another connection I have with this beautiful city.

It was actually my first experience of living in Europe, indeed my first experience of living abroad. And this was for me extremely important because all I knew about Europe, and, to be sure, about the world – except for Brazil, of course  – I had learned from books. And coming here to the Diplomatic Academy, I found myself in a microcosm of the world of that time: Vienna was a very open city and this has always been a very pluralistic institution, in which I saw, and I could, let’s say, live for the first time, with people from Eastern Europe, the then Soviet Union, Poland, also from other parts of Europe. I saw the first Palestinian in my life, who considered himself to be a Palestinian, although he was the bearer of a Jordanian passport. And that’s how I learned about the story of the refugees. And of course there were also many Austrians, who were very hospitable to me, to my wife and, later on, to my son.

It was also a big experience for me because, you know, it was 1966, so the war had ended only 21 years before, and the occupation of Austria 11 years. Of course, for someone who is 24 years-old, 21 years is an enormous amount of time. But when I look backwards and I see what goes on in 21 years, I realize how very near that was. And I could see at that time – very different from today – the marks of war and the marks of occupation in the people in Vienna, in their attitude, especially in the older people, in their faces, and very often in their bodies, I’m afraid to say. So that was the Vienna I came to.

But some renewal was taking place. Ambassador Winkler already referred to Bruno Kreisky, who re-founded the Diplomatic Academy – because the institution had a previous history, or so I understand, as an Oriental School. At that time we students had a very refreshing experience – and this was in my notes, Professor Winter, before I even saw that you were here – of having Ernest Florian Winter as the Director. He had just come back from the United States a couple of years before, and he was this very interesting combination of a European humanist and a modern American political scientist. It was a fascinating experience to be with someone who really enjoyed talking to young people.

I remember very dearly when we paid a visit to Dr. Winter’s castle. I had never visited a castle in my life and it seemed to me quite improbable that someone would actually live in a castle. Mr. Winter, of course, also had a large family. And I think all the students were also part of his family. And when we took this tour, we went to his castle, and I remember seeing – Dr. Winter, you certainly don’t remember this – the many curious objects, books, engravings, maps you had, and at a certain point I stopped to stare at a skull. And you noticed that I was looking at the skull and you noticed precisely what I was looking at, because I was a little bit bewildered by how thin the bones that separate our life from the rest of the world were. And I remember your comment, and I was very touched by the fact that you noticed what I was thinking.  You said something like that: “It’s impressive how close we are from death, isn’t it?” You said that to me. And I always keep that in mind because it’s also a lesson of humility for everything we do in life. So I’m really moved to see you here today.

Also there were other professors, and I’m sorry if I cannot mention all of them. But I remember the stern, awe-inspiring Professor Zemanek, from the University of Vienna, who was a Professor of International Law. I had to follow his classes in German, but I had a privilege: I was allowed to write my essays in French. So that’s how I more or less managed. And the Diplomatic Academy was very generous to me, to be quite honest, because although I appear as part of the Jahrbuch, I had to go away six months before the end of classes, because of my obligations in the Foreign Ministry in Brazil. But I was allowed to finish my Diplomarbeit and thus get the title.

I have to mention – I don’t know if he’s still alive, but this is also an interesting memory that I keep here – that I had a German teacher. Most of my efforts had to be concentrated on German. And I am afraid that in that respect I didn’t go very far. I was not a very, let’s say, humble young man. So on the first day our teacher came with a book, something about foxes and rabbits and things like that, I said “no, no, forget about that, let us read Bertold Brecht”. And I went with my teacher to try to read “Galileu Galilei”.

That teacher of mine was the son-in-law of our Hausfrau. We lived in a small room – myself, my wife, and later on my son – in a nearby street, in Wohllebengasse, which I always had difficulty in pronouncing for the taxi drivers. This teacher, Mr. Pospisil, the son-in-law of Frau Vukovic, showed me the internationality of Vienna. He was a teacher of Latin. So the only common language we had was Latin. I was not terribly fluent in Latin, I must say, but he had to translate whatever I was not able to understand in German into Latin. And that’s how I learned some German to be able at least to read the news.

I also had another important experience: it was the first time I followed a war live. Not on television, since I didn’t have a television set, but on radio. It was the Six-Day War. I used to turn on the radio, I think it was something like Österreichrundfunk, and I remember very clearly they would say “Sie hören nachrichten”. And then came the news of the war. This Palestinian friend of mine, of course, was very sad. I could also see the futility and the cost of trying to change certain situations by military means. This is also one of the lessons I keep from those times.

I have to mention another Austrian who was here at the time and with whom there is an indirect link with the present day establishment. He was called Axl von Leskoschek. He was an artist who had lived in Brazil. He had left Austria on the day of the Anschluss. He had gone to Switzerland, but from Switzerland he moved to Brazil. He became a very important artist in Brazil, he taught engraving and painting to several very well-known Brazilian artists, like Fayga Ostrower, Renina Katz and many others. He was also very fond of our country and so I kept a special link with him.

He belonged to the school of Expressionism – or maybe of social realism of the thirties – but in fact he was not very well-known here. As I came here with President Lula, about three or four years ago, I learned from President Heinz Fischer that he is also the owner of a painting by Axl von Leskoschek. I am fortunate to have several of his engravings. He was the illustrator, for instance, in Brazil, of Dostoievsky, Graciliano Ramos, and many other writers.

And I was very happy to learn that President Heinz’s father – I’m not absolutely sure, and maybe if I’m wrong he’ll correct me later – got the painting from another very famous Austrian, Ernst Fischer, who had written a book called “The Necessity of Art”. I believe the President’s father was a lawyer and he got the painting as a payment for services on copyright for Ernst Fischer.

These are among some of my dearest remembrances of the Academy, and of Vienna of those days beyond the Academy. For me those times have always been, and will continue to be, a symbol of friendship, but also of plurality and diversity.

I think the famous phrase by Metternich that “Asia begins at Landstrasse” is still probably right, when I realize that here I met the first Palestinian, the first Iranian, the first Soviet citizen.

Part II: Brazil – Land of the Future

Before going to something maybe more serious and present day questions, I have to mention another Austrian who lived in Brazil. And this was a writer called Stefan Zweig, of course a well-known, widely known writer.

He wrote several books, novels and essays. One of them became especially famous in Brazil. It was called Brazil – The Land of the Future. And it was the object of many jokes. People would say that Brazil is the land of the future and it will always be. So, now that we hope that we are coming to a new status, it is appropriate to remind of Stefan Zweig.

I’ll mention one of the quotations found by one of my young collaborators here that I think that it is specially telling, although Zweig writes also about other qualities of Brazil, and how Brazil would grow, and so on. But this is one which has a lot to do with what we are doing now and what we are trying to do in international diplomacy. It says: “Generals are neither the pride of Brazil nor her heroes; but rather statesmen like Rio Branco [the patron of Brazilian diplomacy], who knew how to prevent war by reasoning and conciliation. (…) Never has the peace of the world been threatened by her politics; and even in an unpredictable time such as ours [that was the Second World War] one cannot imagine that this basic principle of its national conception, this wish for understanding and good will, could ever change – because this desire for peace, this humanitarian behavior has not been an accidental attitude of a single ruler or leader. It is the natural product of a people’s character, the innate tolerance of the Brazilian, which again and again has proved itself in the course of history”.

So I think that if we Brazilians have any quality – beyond football, the beautiful women and samba – this is the one: our real deep desire for peace and for peaceful solutions. I think this passage illustrates what we have sought in recent initiatives in the field of diplomacy.

Part III: The Teheran Declaration

Instead of repeating the tenets of Brazilian foreign policy, I think it would be more interesting for you if I’d refer specifically to the efforts that Brazil has developed along with Turkey in pursuit of a solution to the vexing question of the Iranian nuclear programme. The Declaration of Teheran, which resulted from such efforts, was signed during President Lula’s and Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to Iran on May 17. It was signed by myself, Minister Davutoglu, of Turkey and of course by our Iranian counterpart, Minister Mottaki.

It is only appropriate that I refer to this in Vienna, which is the headquarters of the IAEA. I don’t want to go into the details. Many of you here are much more of an expert on this question than I am. But let me just say that during the last seven years, I more or less tried to follow what was happening with the Iranian dossier – maybe not so closely, although of course here, in the board of governors of the Atomic Agency, and even as members of the Security Council in 2004 and 2005, we followed the issue with a little bit more attention.

I was a good friend of Mohammed El-Baradei [former Director-General of the IAEA], with whom I had worked when I chaired the Iraq panels, at a time we were still trying to avoid what actually happened with that country. I was also a very good friend of Javier Solana [former European Commissioner for Foreign Policy], who had been my colleague in my first incarnation as foreign minister [1993-1994]. So I tried to keep track of events.

Since the middle of 2009 onwards, we tried to follow the issue more closely for several reasons. Firstly, because Brazil was about to become once again a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. So it would be our responsibility to deal with the subject.

Secondly, because we had already a scheduled visit by President Ahmadinejad to Brazil in November. Of course we discussed many aspects of our bilateral relations on that occasion, including economic issues, and also the role of Iran in the Middle East. But the discussion of the nuclear file was an obvious necessity in that context.

I had followed the subjects and had several talks with El-Baradei and Solana in meetings in Davos, in Brussels, etc. I had always found that all the proposals that had been made so far were bound to fail. I’m not going into the merits, but they were bound to fail because all of them – maybe not in the letter, or in the spirit, but certainly in practical terms – did not accept the right of Iran not only to have a peaceful nuclear programme (of course this all recognize) but also the right to enrich uranium. I had the conviction that Iran would never give up this right. Whether this was good or bad it’s another question, but I was convinced of  that fact.

The September/October proposal contained for the first time the idea of exchanging Iranian low enriched uranium for fuel for the Teheran Research Reactor. Implicitly, if not explicitly, the right of Iran to enrich uranium would be then recognized. This would be received positively by Iran. It would have been helpful in the overall discussions. And it would also have been a positive thing for those who have concerns about Iran. If the swap had been performed, the question of 20% enrichment, which today is another vexing question, would not have even posed itself.

Actually, Iran’s original initiative was to buy uranium for its nuclear reactor. It was not able to do so. There was the swap proposal, which of course was also cleaver. And the swap would open the possibility for a real negotiation.

Part IV: Brazil’s Position on Iran Sanctions

Brazil also has strong skepticism about the power of sanctions. In some extreme cases, sanctions may work. I could not exclude them in a situation such a that of South Africa (as a matter of fact the sanctions against South Africa were never imposed by the Security Council, but rather by the General Assembly).

In most cases sanctions affect the most vulnerable people, they do not change the course of action of leaders and, if anything, they reinforce the more radical sectors in the countries concerned. That’s what we saw very clearly in the case of Iraq – we saw in other cases as well, but Iraq was probably the best example of how the logic of sanctions works: sanctions precipitate reactions, which tend to toughen sanctions, in a kind of vicious circle that may have – as it had in the case of Iraq – very tragic consequences.

Part V: Removing the main obstacles

What did we, Brazil and Turkey, do together? We continued to discuss with our Iranian friends to see if we could remove the main obstacles regarding the September/October proposal.

Which were those main obstacles? There were three substantive points and one formal point, which had been mentioned in previous discussions.

The first point had to do with the quantity of uranium. Mr. Sultani and perhaps other people from the Atomic Agency will remember that only two or three weeks before the Teheran Agreement, Minister Mottaki was here offering 1,000 kilograms in exchange for the equivalent amount of fuel. Other people I talked to in Iran would say: “we don’t need a swap of 1,200 kilos because we don’t need the equivalent in fuel”. The example that I always give is: “I have a car. If it will only last for five years, why do I need spare parts for 10 years?” This is one of the problems – the quantity. In the Teheran Declaration, Iran agreed with 1,200 kilograms, which was the quantity originally proposed.

The second point was the place of exchange. This had become – if Sultani will allow me to say it in that way – almost a “theological” question, since the place of exchange is very much linked to questions of sovereignty and so on. Iran was saying (that’s also of public knowledge) that it were prepared to accept the original proposal, provided that the question of quantity was already sorted out. But Iran also insisted that the exchange should take place on Iranian soil. The Iranians even offered some kind of free trade zone, where it could be under the supervision of the IAEA. In the Teheran Declaration, Iran accepted to have the swap take place in a third country – Turkey.

The third point had to do with timing. In the Iranian view, the exchange should have to be simultaneous. That meant that Iran would only send abroad the LEU that it had when it had received, more or less at the same time, either in total or in part, the fuel enriched at 20%. Again, in the Teheran Declaration, Iran agreed to do it immediately. The question of timing was a very crucial one. It was emphasized to us that if the idea of simultaneity prevailed Iran would accumulate more enriched uranium.

These were the three main points. They were resolved in the Teheran Declaration. They were totally resolved, not only partially resolved, conceptually at least.

There was a fourth point, which was of formal nature. Very often we heard “Iran is saying something to you, something to the Turks, sometimes something to the Chinese, but if they want to do something seriously, they know whom they should address, and this is the Atomic Agency”. In our Declaration, it was established that Iran should reply to the Atomic Agency in seven days. In exactly seven days Iran replied to the Atomic Agency, annexing the Teheran Declaration. So all the four points, the three substantive points and the formal point, were seen to.

Part VI: Reactions to the Teheran Declaration

If one reads the comments made by the Vienna Group on the letter by Iran and on Teheran Declaration, one will see that many doubts remain.

These doubts are basically of two orders: the first one refers to real problems, which are very important, but which we consider could be solved once the confidence-building agreement was reached. Those are things like the 20% enrichment and the accumulated stock of uranium after the October proposal was made. These are all real problems, but they were not raised as preconditions for negotiation – at least not at the highest level.

There was a second kind of problems that are mentioned in this letter and these have to do a little bit with operational questions. For instance, the question about from when you start counting the time for delivery. Iran made the commitment to send the LEU to Turkey in one month, but it’s not very clear if it is after the reply or if it is after the operational agreement. But I’m sure that, if the political will exists, this is a question that can be solved as soon as the negotiators sit-down.

We were a bit surprised. In fact there were two things that really, disappointed us. First, was the perception that the decision to continue on the sanctions road was taken even before the Declaration was properly analyzed. There was no time to do so, I can tell you. I was on my flight back to Brazil – I had left President Lula earlier because I thought that I had to make a lot of phone calls, so I decided to go directly to Brazil. In my first stopover, I made some phone calls, and I saw that the prevailing idea was to go on with the sanctions resolution before actually people could have analyzed the Declaration in full. In an interview that El-Baradei gave to the Brazilian press, he said: “apparently people could not take yes for an answer”. So that was the first thing that was bothering.

The second was the fact that less than 24 hours – in fact little more than six hours after the comments of the Vienna Group to the Iranian letter to the Agency (it took two weeks or so after receiving the letter from Iran for the Vienna Group to express its comments) the sanctions were being voted in the Security Council. Even supposing (I’m not saying that it would happen – and I’m not that naïf) – that Iran would agree with all the comments and say that they would do everything that was required, the sanctions were already put to the vote. There was no time even to reflect on the comments.

We had the agreement on May 17. The comments came in the morning on June 9. And on midday, New York time, June 9, the sanctions were being voted. Brazil could not vote in any other way except as it did: vote no. This is something that has to be understood: it was not only a question of voting about some distant issue, this was a voting that involved a proposal that Brazil and Turkey had made and which was being totally set aside.

Of course everyone – almost everyone – said nice words about what we did, about the good efforts, the good will. But you know: “They are not permanent members, so why are they meddling with that?” Of course that was not said in such words.

Part VII: Prospects on Iran’s nuclear program

What are the prospects now? A lot depends on Iran’s reactions, but also on Western countries’ reactions, on the P-5 countries reactions. The Iranian National Security Council had said that Teheran Declaration is on the table – and that’s a very good thing.

Apart from the sanctions that were adopted multilaterally, there are also the unilateral sanctions that were announced on June 16, in the case of the United States, and on June 17, precisely one month after our Declaration, by the European Union. I don’t know what kind of effect they will have.

Today the American edition of the Financial Times brings a piece of news whose title is: “Brazil ends role as Iranian broker”. First of all, we have never been a broker as such. But anyway, this is a total distortion of the press. I’m sorry to say so because the Financial Times is normally a very respectable newspaper, but that is not what I said. It is a deduction – or maybe a wishful thinking – on the part of who ever wrote the article.

What I said, and I reiterate it, is that we need now some unambiguous request to be involved. For the young diplomats present here, it is important to know that sometimes we have to work on ambiguity, and some ambiguity is necessary (in negotiations). But there are limits for what you can do based on ambiguity.

I think this is a situation in which we cannot proceed on the basis of ambiguity. Before the Teheran Declaration, we received signals that we considered – and I’m sure it is true also for the Turkish side – as  encouragements to go ahead. There were even people who said “this is the last chance to come to an agreement”. Some said that they hoped that we would come to an agreement. Others might have hoped that we would not come to an agreement. And then we would be disappointed and we would join the crowd in the vote for sanctions. Countries with whom we have excellent relations now come to us and say “Brazil has to keep its role, because we may need you”… Well, ambiguous encouragement of this type will not do. Now it has to be a very clear signal. As I said, there are limits to what we can do based on ambiguity.

Part VIII: Brazil’s role in a new world order

In my opinion, this episode offers several lessons. That’s why I elaborated on that for some time. I can now go back to Stefan Zweig, who said that Brazil was the “country of the future”. In many respects, the future has already come.

In economic terms, there is the BRIC group, acting, for instance, in the G-20. Together, the BRIC have a big clout. Things are already changing in some of the financial provisions. Brazil, for instance, is now assisting Greece to get out of its crisis (Brazil also became creditor to the IMF). These are new times.

In trade negotiations, India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Argentina and a few others are vital forces that cannot be ignored. In the Cancun meeting in 2003, when we created the G-20 in the WTO, these countries changed forever the patterns of negotiations in WTO. So, in this respect, again, future has already come.

In climate change, the final negotiation in Copenhagen involved on one side President Obama, on the other side the so-called BASIC countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China. And, by the way, BASIC is the first global acronym which is in Portuguese, as far as I know, because it’s not South Africa. It’s Brazil, África do Sul, India and China.

But in terms of peace and security, I don’t know if the world is already mature to receive newcomers such as Brazil, India, Turkey, Argentina, South Africa and many others. In this respect, Brazil is still the country of the future. But I hope it will not be very long before, in this respect, future arrives as well.

Thank you, danke schön. It’s really a great pleasure being here.