Yoshie:
A Democratic President of the USA would never support the Bolivarian government of Venezuela for in its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council or anything else for that matter, but Lula does.
Right. Some support. BBC Monitoring International Reports October 6, 2006 Friday BRAZILIAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY TO SEND AGENTS TO VENEZUELA, BOLIVIA Text of report by Brazilian newspaper Correio Braziliense website on 5 October Now it is official. The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) has begun an internal selection to pick the secret agents that will be sent to Venezuela and Bolivia. Due to their recent political and economic positions, the two countries have become a thorn in Brazil's side, especially President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's side. The start of the selection was authorized by Lula. According to what Estado de Minas has found out, the selection was authorized by directive number 362, issued jointly by Abin and the Institutional Security Office (GSI), an office of the Presidency of the Republic. The directive is secret. Instead of being published in the Diario Oficial da Uniao [official gazette], as is the practice with directives from the Executive Branch, it only appeared in Abin's Special Service Bulletin No 8, issued last 4 September and classified confidential. Together with the directive, competition announcements numbers 2 and 3 were issued, with the requirements for the internal selection. The agents will operate under cover of the diplomatic service. They will be based in Brazil's embassies in Caracas and La Paz and, strictly speaking, they will be considered civilian attaches. The decision to "embed" secret agents in Itamaraty [Foreign Ministry] goes against the tradition of Brazilian diplomacy. Not even during the military regime (1964-1985) did the Ministry of Foreign Relations accept having secret agents from other organizations of the Executive Branch or the armed forces operating under the disguise of diplomats. At the time, Itamaraty set up its own secret service - the Foreign Intelligence Centre (Ciex), very efficient by the way - to supply the National Intelligence Service (SNI). It thus preferred turning diplomats into secret agents over having secret agents disguised as diplomats. Source: Correio Braziliense website, Brasilia, in Portuguese 5 Oct 06 -- www.marxmail.org
