Brazil set to brush off its controversial radar scheme in bid to improve jungle vigilance

Brazil's $1.4 billion US-made radar system, designed to track illegal smugglers across the vast dense Amazon jungle, is due to be fully working this year after an inauspicious start dogged by political controversy.

31 January 2003 3:29 GMT Updated 31 January 2003 3:29 GMT

The System for the Vigilance of the Amazon, (Sivam), involves a web of radars, control towers and spy planes scanning Brazil's Amazon. It could, among other tasks, track drug smugglers from neighbouring Colombia.

Designed by US defence contractor Raytheon, Sivam marked one of the biggest scandals of previous Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government, stirring up a political whirlwind in 1995 that cost several officials their jobs.

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Brazil set to brush off its controversial radar scheme in bid to improve jungle vigilance