News In Brief

Brazil can make the bomb by 1990s, an official says

Brazil will have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons by the 1990s, Navy Minister Maximiano da Fonseca said in a newspaper interview published Sunday. But Mr. da Fonseca told the Jornal do Brasil that any decision to make a bomb would depend on a political decision to be taken by a future government.

He said programs aimed at developing a nuclear-powered submarine would produce as a spinoff the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons.