BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- The two giants of South America, Brazil and Argentina, untrusting rivals for centuries, have decided to revolutionize their diplomatic and economic affairs to achieve a common goal: become friends.
The turnabout has gotten little attention, but diplomats in both countries say the big push came last November when Brazil's President Jose Sarney and Argentina's President Raul Alfonsin met to inaugurate a bridge near spectacular Iguazu Falls.
They signed a series of agreements, pledging cooperation in everything from biotechnology to building airplanes. The presidents promised that neither would build at atomic bomb and ordered that ideas be drafted on how to make the pledge permanent.
Diplomats in Brasilia and Buenos Aires say that more important than the accords was the determination behind them.
'I don't think most Argentines realize there has been a revolution in our relationship with Brazil,' said a diplomat in Buenos Aires. 'Ten years ago nobody would have imagined Brazil and Argentina would cooperate in building an airplane. Now this has happened.
The alliance could be a formidable political and economic combination. Brazil alone is larger than the U.S. mainland and Argentina is the world's ninth largest country. Their combined population is 165 million inhabitants, more than half of South America's total.
The Brazil-Argentina rivalry dates back to colonial times when Portuguese settlers from Brazil and Spanish speaking inhabitants clashed along the border, especially in the area that now constitutes the nation of Paraguay, where Jesuit missionaries organized Indian garrisons to fight against Portuguese slave raiders.
Argentina and Brazil fought a war between 1825 and 1827 that ended with a compromise that created Uruguay as a buffer state.
More recently the countries feuded over jurisdiction over the headwaters of the Parana River, which Brazil dominates through giant hydroelectric projects, but that dispute ended with a treaty in 1979.
The two nations are both democracies and both recently emerged from long periods of military rule.
The new friendship can have its most dramatic impact in trade between the two nations. Brazil and Argentina each do about $1.1 billion in business with each other annually -- a figure could easily double or triple. Brazil has trade amounting to $1.6 billion with Nigeria, which surged in importance as an oil supplier to Brazil in the 1970s.
Experts are trying to find ways to balance trade so that Argentina, with an inferior industrial base to Brazil, will not be reduced to an agricultural nation supplying raw materials to Brazil's factories.
'We have a trigger mechanism to balance the composition of the trade in both directions,' said an Argentine diplomat. 'This means that the amount of trade may be low now, but the balanced composition in quality ensures that it will grow in a healthy way in the future.'
The experts are targeting specific industrial and agricultural areas for cooperation.
'An agreement in natural gas alone could increase trade by $800 million a year,' the diplomat said.
Among the specific projects, Argentina and Brazil are building a 19-seat turboprop passenger plane, the EMB-123, which will be assembled in Brazil, with Argentina supplying materials and a $300 million investment.
Sixty Argentine technicians are studying airplane building techniques in Brazil and another 250 are studying computer science there.
An Argentine authority said Brazil recently supplied metal shielding material for an Argentine nuclear plant in a deal directly related to the growing relationship between the countries.
Diplomats and technicians also are discussing ways to cooperate in the pharmaceutical industry. One proposal is for Argentina to produce insulin for Brazil and Brazil inferon for Argentina, with both medicines exported to the rest of Latin America.
'We think this bilateral relationship could be kind of a locomotive for South America,' said an Argentine diplomat.
The diplomat said although the return to democracy in both countries was a vital factor in achieving good will, Brazil boosted the relationship even earlier by giving Argentina strong political backing during the 1982 Falkland Island war with Britain.
During that conflict, in which Argentina was defeated, Brazil lent Argentina coastal patrol planes.
Brazil's then-President Joao Batista Figuereido also allowed some refueling landings by British aircraft but he later halted them.
Both Argentina and Brazil have their economies burdened by a staggering foreign debt, and they have been forced to undertake austerity programs to reduce runaway inflation.
'The economic crisis has forced us to think in common,' the diplomat said.
