Brazil’s President Offers $1.2-Billion Plan to Save Forest

RIO DE JANEIRO —  Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello appealed to world leaders to back a $1.2-billion plan to save the Amazon rain forest, government officials said Thursday.

Collor wrote to President Bush and the other six leaders of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations asking them to consider the plan at their July summit in London, the officials said.

Brazil is in the midst of its worst recession in decades, and the country is desperate for new foreign investment, which has all but dried up since the debt crisis of the 1980s.

Bowing to international pressure, Collor late Wednesday also signed a decree forbidding government subsidies for projects that involve the destruction of virgin rain forest or of vital ecosystems.

Ecologists and foreign politicians have strongly criticized the subsidies, which are mainly used by logging companies and cattle ranchers.

Collor’s decree also ordered the state environment institute to carry out periodic inspections of subsidized projects in the Amazon to check their environmental impact and to order their immediate suspension if they broke the law.