What’s landed New Delhi in this unprecedented embarrassment is an interview Ramesh gave to visiting Brazilian journalist Patricia Campos Mello from the influential Estado do Sao Paulo newspaper last month. In that, Ramesh ridiculed the very idea of IBSA and even questioned bilateral economic co-operation.

“The idea that India and Brazil are natural allies is a little naive,” he is quoted as having said, “we are competitors, we are competing in (the) manufacturing sector...we have contrary interest in agriculture (Brazil is on the rise and India on the defensive) and in services, we want an opening much faster than Brazilians...IBSA will be a powerful bloc in South-South cooperation with echoes of ‘non-alignment’ in earlier times but from the economic point of view, IBSA is little fictitious.’’

(This translation from Portuguese is the version sent to the Prime Minister’s Office by Renu Sharma, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Brazil).

Brazilian Foreign and Trade Minister Celso Amorim has let his disappointment be known through the Indian Ambassador to Brazil Hardeep Singh Puri who brought it to the notice of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday.

Puri wrote: “He (Amorim) said that such views, even if expressed by a junior minister, generate pressures from the Brazilian press, sections of which are more inclined in favour of intensifying cooperation with the US and European countries rather than important developing countries like India.’’

Puri has also pointed to Brazil being extra-sensitive on the issue as Presidential polls there are scheduled for October 1. And the tri-lateral meeting between Prime Minister Singh, President Lula Da Silva and South African President Thabo Mbeki is on September 12-13.

Puri went on to add that the Brazilian Foreign Minister had asked him to request the Indian leadership to correct the picture either in New Delhi or in Brasilia.

To do that, Ramesh’s senior, Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has advanced his trip by a day — the Prime Minister is leaving on Sunday — and is leaving for Brasilia tonight to clarify that Ramesh’s statement is not the official Indian position.

In fact, South Block has already told Brazil’s Ambassador to India Jose Vicenta De Sa Pimental that Ramesh is not authorized to speak on such issues. Nath was initially scheduled to leave for Brasilia tomorrow to attend the G-20 Ministerial and then stay back as part of the PM’s team at the IBSA summit. Ramesh was unavailable for comment.