AFP , Brasilia, Sept 16, 2011  – Brazil said Friday it held suspicions that Iran’s nuclear program was ’not entirely for peaceful ends,’ reducing its previous strong support for Tehran in the teeth of international fears Iran was aiming to build an atomic bomb.
Fears that Tehran was not exclusively pursuing nuclear energy development have ’some foundation,’ Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said in an interview with the UOL news website and the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, without elaborating.
However, he said that Brazil felt dialogue with Iran was the right way forward to reduce tensions.
’There are fears with some foundation that Iran’s nuclear energy development program might not be exclusively for peaceful ends. I believe it is necessary for Iran to show that it is in fact only for peaceful ends,’ Patriota said.
Brazil insisted that trust had to be built up, ’and the creation of trust comes from trying dialogue,’ he said.
’We are favorable to a relation with Iran to contribute to reducing the tensions.’
The comments marked a different tone from the one struck under Brazil’s previous government headed by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who proclaimed himself a ’friend’ of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and who defended Tehran’s nuclear program.
Current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s former right-hand woman who took power nine months ago, has injected more caution into the relationship with Iran.
This year, for instance, her government dropped opposition to a UN Human Rights Council resolution creating a special rapporteur on the rights situation in Iran.