Clinton Apologizes For Guidebook Slur

President Clinton apologized Tuesday for a U.S. government-produced guidebook that said corruption was endemic to the Brazilian culture.

“The document was wrong, and it represented an appalling error of judgment for anybody to write such a thing,” Clinton said during a news conference with Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardosa. “I can only ask the Brazilian people not to infer that that is the feeling of either the government, or more importantly, the people of the United States toward Brazil.”

The apology was just one item on a busy agenda on Clinton’s third day of a weeklong Latin American tour. During a more than 30-minute private meeting, the presidents discussed global warming.

They later also signed agreements to enhance legal cooperation between the two countries - a pact that lets the United States open an FBI office in Brazil - and establish cooperative programs to increase standards in Brazilian schools.

But the guidebook situation was one of the incidents - along with Brazilian complaints about Clinton’s Secret Service detail carrying weapons and a U.S. press corps guide that criticized Brasilia’s architecture - that had spurred charges of American arrogance in the Brazilian press and threatened to overshadow Clinton’s first official trip to South America.

U.S. State Department officials said that the lines about corruption were removed from the guidebook. But the reference continued to sting some Brazilians. A justice on the country’s Supreme Court boycotted a dinner for Clinton Tuesday night.

Clinton told U.S. and Brazilian journalists Tuesday that “No Brazilian could have been more upset about it than I was. I thought it was terrible and I did everything to correct it.”

Clinton used a news conference outside Cardozo’s residence to reiterate his call for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, a zone proposed to stretch from Alaska to Argentina, by 2005. It would be comparable to the current North American Free Trade Agreement area that includes Mexico.

He also tried to ease suspicions in Brazil that the United States views Mercosur, a Latin American trade organization, as a threat.

Clinton said it was a “false choice” between a free trade zone and Mercosur.

“We believe we can create a Free Trade Area of the Americas consistent with Mercosur,” he said.