Power of the Brass

Buckling under the pressure of Nationalist army leaders, Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek last week halted thorium exports to the U.S., canceled the 1955 U.S.-Brazilian agreement to cooperate in exploring Brazil for deposits of radioactive minerals. The U.S. embassy in Rio first learned of the turnabout by reading about it in the local newspapers. Brazil's troublemaking Communists, who could never have brought off such a coup by themselves, whooped with delight. Bannered the Communist daily, Imprensa Popular: HISTORICAL VICTORY

OF THE PEOPLE.

Brazilian Communists and nationalists unite in taking a fiercely protective attitude toward Brazil's mineral resources ("The oil is ours!"). Months ago this alliance of extremes, which stunts the country's economic growth by barring foreign capital from oil exploitation, began denouncing exports of radioactive material to the U.S. (thorium oxide and thorium-bearing monazite sand, no uranium). The showdown came last week, when the Security Council, loaded with nationalistic armed forces brass, adopted a military-dominated commission's recommendations that Brazil suspend exports of radioactive minerals and end the joint-exploration treaty with the U.S. President Kubitschek meekly gave the nationalistic generals their way. Still in effect was the "Atoms for Peace" agreement in which the U.S., without asking anything in return, promised to provide Brazil with 13.2 Ibs. of uranium reactor fuel, donate $350,000 toward the cost of a research reactor.

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