MILITARY INTERVENTION ONLY BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT.

Colonel Wilian Vargas da Silva, spokesman for the local Army commando, issued a statement on TV the evening of 7th April.

Only the president of the Republic, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, can authorise an intervention of the Army in the Cosipa affair, which today, 9th April, enters its 7th day. A guarantee was given through the TV by the spokesman for the local commando, Colonel Wilian Vargas da Silva.

"There will only be intervention with the express authority of the president and only after it is determined that the Governor of the State of São Paulo is incapable of resolving the situation," he affirmed.

"In the eventuality that we receive an authorisation from Brasilia to intervene, our action will be restricted only to the installations of the work site and not to the ships moored alongside," he concluded.

There is great apprehension on the ships in the face of the request by Cosipa for armed military intervention. The workers on board the two ships "Marcos Dias" and "Vancouver", the first of Brazilian flag and the second of Maltese flag, have slept on the ground and enduring the rain these last days. They have been aboard since Friday, when Cosipa hampered their proceeding with the normal change of stevedores every 6 hours. In the port of Cosipa around 500 demonstrators are camped out, also at risk of military intervention. The vigil has already lasted 10 days.

The president of Cosipa, Marcus Tambascu, who is mainly responsible for the intransigence over reopening negotiations, was in Brasilia seeking backing for a solution by force. He threatened to seek intervention from the government of the State of São Paulo which, according to it, did not authorise its Military Police to use force against the workers.

COSIPA tries to win hearts and minds

In a true operation of media war, Cosipa has taken up enormous space in the pages of the Brazilian press today, 9th April, trying to win hearts and minds claiming that it is right in the scandalous affair in which it is involved. With the aid of the conservative press, tied historically to dismantling the Brazilian trade union movement, it tries to convince public opinion that it is fulfilling the Law of the Ports, when it is doing exactly the opposite.