BRASILIA, May 25 (Reuters) – Brazil’s ruling party presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, pledged on Tuesday to eradicate poverty and propel Latin America’s largest economy to developed-nation status if she wins October’s election.

“We can and we will transform our economy from an emerging nation to a developed nation,” Rousseff told the National Industry Confederation, the country’s leading business organization, in Brasilia.

“Our pledge is to do so by eradicating poverty. We can do it. All studies point in that direction.”

Rousseff, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s former chief of staff, is tied in most opinion polls with former Sao Paulo state governor Jose Serra of the centrist PSDB party.

Dubbed the iron lady, the former left-wing activist is trying to replicate the mix of mostly market-friendly policies with social welfare programs that has made Lula the most popular president in recent history.

The Lula administration pulled millions of people out of poverty with new and better-paid jobs as well as expanded social welfare programs.

MIDDLE CLASS

BRASILIA, May 25 (Reuters) – Brazil’s leading opposition candidate, Jose Serra, said on Tuesday that he would trim fat from Brazil’s budget and make the central bank head follow government policy if he wins October’s vote.

The former Sao Paulo state governor is running for the centrist PSDB party on a platform of lean but activist government.

“We need to spend less on the (state) apparatus and more on the people,” Serra told the National Industry Confederation, the country’s leading business organization, in Brasilia.

Serra is neck and neck with ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff in opinion polls ahead of the Oct. 3 presidential vote to decide the successor of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who by law cannot run for a third consecutive term.

According to a study presented during the event with the three leading presidential candidates, Brazil ranks 128th of 133 countries in terms of government efficiency.

“It’s evident we need to improve the efficiency of the state. We need to boost the cost-benefit ratio of taxes,” said Paulo Godoy, head of the Brazilian infrastructure association.

Industry leaders presented the candidates with a laundry list of obstacles they said eroded Brazil’s international competitiveness, including a strong currency, a high tax burden, and red tape.

BRASILIA, May 24 (Reuters) – Brazil’s Green Party presidential candidate Marina Silva proposed on Monday to cut taxes and social security benefits, giving a market-friendly slant to her platform of clean government and environment. Silva trails in third place in opinion polls but as a world-renowned champion of the Amazon she is expected to help shape the campaign agenda before Oct. 3 general elections. A strong showing by Silva could also mean that her party would form part of a likely coalition government. "Brazil can’t handle the burden of taxes and inefficiency anymore," Silva said in an interview with CBN radio, endorsing demands of business leaders who say the country’s investment climate is eroding their international competitiveness. Silva, who stepped down as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s environment minister in May 2008, also urged a reform of the country’s costly pension system, echoing pledges by ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff and the leading opposition contender Jose Serra. Serra and Rouseff were tied with 37 percent of voter intention in a Datafolha opinion poll at the weekend, against Silva’s 12 percent. "Obviously we’ll have to reform the social security system. The deficit … is very serious," Silva said. Investors are closely watching the growing deficit of Brazil’s social security system, which accounts for one of the government’s largest expenditures. With an aging population the deficit could expand more rapidly in coming years if no cuts are made, economists warn. In a further attempt to build a market-friendly image, and win centrist voters from former chief of staff Rousseff and former Sao Paulo state Governor Serra, Silva said she favored autonomous regulatory agencies and criticized a government-led plan to improve broadband access. Rousseff and Serra favor a pro-active government and a larger role for state companies in the economy. The current government has stripped regulatory agencies of some of their powers and is accused of exerting political pressure on them. Silva’s vice-presidential running mate is the wealthy businessman Guilherme Leal, owner of the big cosmetics company Natura <NATU3.SA>. GREEN AGENDA Silva, who abandoned Lula’s leftist Workers’ Party in 2008 to join the Green Party, also criticized the current government for financing ecological destruction in the Amazon rain forest, where Silva began her political career beside legendary conservationist Chico Mendes. The government’s development bank, BNDES, supported unsustainable cattle-ranching and massive hydroelectric dams in the Amazon rainforest, she said. "The BNDES gave 8 billion reais ($4.32 billion) in loans to slaughterhouses in the Amazon without environmental criteria," said Silva, who only learned to read and write when she was 16 years old and worked as a maid to pay the bills. "Today we’re losing one thousand times more biodiversity than we did 50 years ago. Soon we’ll undermine the natural resource base for our development," Silva told CBN. When she launched her candidacy just over a week ago, she proposed to combat corruption, build bicycle paths and water treatment plants, and employ greener farming technologies. The Green Party, long a fringe party in Brazil with little clout, made headlines in 2008 when its candidate, Deputy Fernando Gabeira, nearly won the mayorship of Rio de Janeiro. It has 14 out of 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress. (Editing by David Storey)

XINGU RIVER, Brazil, May 24 (Reuters) – Beptum Xikrin contemplates the Bacaja River from his village of thatched-roof huts, wondering how he will catch fish or take Brazil nuts to market if a planned dam on the Amazon’s mighty Xingu River will, as ecologists expect, all but dry up this tributary.

After nearly three decades of sometimes violent protests, Beptum and 1,000 other indigenous people in this remote region of the Brazilian Amazon have resigned themselves to the fact that the world’s third-largest dam will be built in their backyard.

“They decided to build it against our will; what can we do?” said Beptum at a meeting of tribesmen, many with body tattoos and large earlobe piercings.

A start date for construction of the Belo Monte dam has not been set yet, but it is expected to come online in 2015.

Near the meeting tribesmen, a naked girl with a partially shaven scalp plays with a broken doll in the dirt, while a woman roasts manioc flour — a staple of the Brazilian diet – over an open fire.

The apparent calm is likely to change when, further downstream, trucks and bulldozers move more earth than was shifted during the construction of the Panama Canal.

The building of the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, estimated to cost between $11 billion and $17 billion, illustrates the dilemmas Brazil faces as it strives to make the leap to developed-nation status.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil still sees room for a negotiated solution to Iran’s nuclear program but acknowledges Tehran’s plans to continue uranium enrichment are a concern neither country addressed in talks, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Friday.

Brazil and Turkey helped broker an agreement under which Iran agreed to send low-enriched uranium abroad, reviving a fuel swap plan drafted by the United Nations with the waim of keeping Iran’s nuclear activities in check.

Washington regards that deal as a delaying tactic by Iran, and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council agreed on a draft resolution to impose new sanctions on Iran.

“Of course there need to be reassurances, discussions — many things still need to happen. It’s difficult but there is a way out,” Amorim told foreign correspondents in his office.

“You need to give it some time to work.”

If the sanctions were approved, Iran would cancel the accord with Turkey and Brazil, a member of Iran’s parliament said.

Several countries were still open to the possibility of pursuing talks at the same time as imposing sanctions on Iran, said Amorim.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva put his country in the global spotlight this week when he helped broker a controversial fuel swap deal for Iran’s nuclear program.

But he may have angered the United States and other powerful allies with the agreement, which is similar to a previous United Nations plan that aimed to keep Tehran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

“It’s a victory for diplomacy,” Lula, a former trade unionist who has promoted the interests of developing nations, told Brazilian radio a day after Iran agreed to trade some of its enriched uranium in return for fuel rods for a reactor.

A handful of influential Western nations, along with Russia and China, appeared set to rebuff the deal in the United Nations Security Council at Washington’s urging and push for a move to impose a fourth round of U.N. sanctions on Iran.

Brazil, a rising global and regional power, now risks looking naive or, worse yet, an accomplice to Iran’s nuclear ambitions if Tehran continues to breach Security Council resolutions and drags its feet on international inspections.

“Brazil helped Iran get back to the negotiating table and that’s clearly positive — Lula can claim credit for that,” said Alcides Costa Vaz, vice-director of the Foreign Relations Institute at the University of Brasilia.

“But it’s a risky and fragile bet,” he added.

BRASILIA, May 17 (Reuters) – Ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff and the opposition’s top contender, Jose Serra, are virtually tied ahead of Brazil’s presidential election in October, an opinion survey showed on Monday.

Rousseff’s support jumped to 37 percent from 28.5 percent in February, while Serra dropped to 37.8 percent from 40.7 percent in the same period, according to a Sensus poll commissioned by the National Transport Confederation.

“There’s no way to tell who will win,” Ricardo Guedes, director of the polling firm Sensus, told a news conference.

Marina Silva, Lula’s former environment minister and candidate for the Green Party, got 8 percent.

Rousseff, from the ruling Workers’ Party, gained ground on Serra, thanks to an improving economy and support from popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the poll showed.

The economy is expected to grow at more than 6 percent this year, creating millions of jobs.

Nearly 60 percent of those polled by Sensus said employment had improved over the past six months.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Former rubber tapper turned environmentalist Marina Silva joined Brazil’s presidential race as candidate for the small Green Party on Sunday, pledging clean government and sustainable development.

The soft-spoken former environment minister trails the two front-running candidates by a wide margin and most analysts say her chances of winning the presidency in October are slim.

But as a world-renowned champion of the Amazon, she is likely to get the limelight she seeks to push the environment higher up on the campaign agenda.

At a party convention on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Silva on Sunday pledged to promote sustainable economic development and to combat social injustice and corruption.

“We already have many of the technical answers for food, education and housing problems — what’s missing is an ethical commitment,” the 52-year-old Silva said.

Proposing bicycle paths, water treatment plants and greener farming technologies, Silva said she was as motivated as she was several decades ago when she worked alongside legendary environmental activist Chico Mendes.

Silva, who stepped down as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s environment minister in May 2008, pledged to maintain economic policies that have given Brazil economic growth and stability in recent years, such as inflation control, a floating currency and fiscal discipline to reduce public debt.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega urged the United States on Wednesday to raise interest rates and allow the U.S. dollar to appreciate in order to combat global economic imbalances.

In an interview with Reuters Insider in Brasilia, Mantega also called on the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to swiftly implement a massive rescue package for the euro zone to ensure success in combating Europe’s debt crisis.

As Brazil’s economic clout has grown in recent years, Mantega has become an influential voice in global economic affairs.

In recent months, Mantega has joined the United States and other countries in urging China to let its currency strengthen to help the global economy. But on Wednesday he said the United States was also to blame for many of the woes afflicting the world economy.

“They must increase the interest rate in the United States … to find a new currency balance,” Mantega said. “The problem isn’t China, it’s the United States,” he said, when asked about the impact of China’s weak currency on global trade.

“The bigger responsibility is of the weak dollar,” Mantega said, adding the greenback’s weakness is a result of lower interest rates and excess credit in the United States.

“I’ve noticed there’s a strategy by the United States and advanced countries to increase exports and reduce their imbalances at the cost of emerging markets,” Mantega, a former economics professor, said at his office in Brasilia.

BRASILIA, May 12 (Reuters) – President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Iran this weekend to help mediate a standoff over the Islamic country’s nuclear program may be Brazil’s biggest gamble yet in its quest for more diplomatic clout.

The Latin American giant, which has a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council, opposes more sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment plans, saying such measures usually hit the poor and could push Tehran to radicalize further.

“It is not prudent to push Iran into a corner,” Lula, who has traveled to more than 80 countries as president in a bid to raise Brazil’s profile, said recently.

On his two-day trip to Tehran, the charismatic Lula will try to persuade his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to revisit a stalled proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, under which Iran would send low-enriched uranium abroad and receive a higher grade uranium in return.

The Obama administration accused Iran last week of trying to buy time by accepting Brazilian mediation. [ID:nN06268859]

If the efforts bear fruit, Lula could claim credit for helping to defuse a global security crisis. But if Iran balks, skeptics are likely to claim that Tehran was simply exploiting Brazil’s dreams of global grandeur to delay new sanctions.

“Good offices are always welcome, but if Brazil helps block sanctions, it’ll be a serious problem,” said Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to Washington. “Right or wrong, the issue is on the global agenda and Brazil is in the middle.”