Celso Amorim: Brazil ends mediator role

The issue brought relations between the Lula da Silva government and the Obama administration to a new low.

Brazil’s commitment to a mediating role in the Iranian nuclear dispute was the subject of conflicting reports Monday after a British newspaper indicated that the South American country was halting its attempt to broker a deal.

The paper had quoted Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim as saying that his country would stop working toward a diplomatic agreeement between Iran and Western powers. But Amorim told reporters Monday that Brazil was still hopeful for a peaceful solution to the standoff.

Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that the country would no longer seek to settle the dispute after the US rejected a Turkish-Brazilian deal with Iran to exchange half Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel for a research reactor. “We got our fingers burned by doing things that everybody said were helpful and in the end we found that some people could not take ‘yes’ for an answer,” Mr Amorim said in a clear reference to Washington. “If we are required , maybe we can still be useful . . . But we are not going out in a proactive way again unless we are required to.”

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