Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil will limit United Nations' access to a uranium enrichment plant as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visits the country to press for unimpeded inspections, the country's ambassador in Washington said.

Brazil will bar the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from parts of the plant to protect secret technology to make fuel for nuclear power generation, Ambassador Roberto Abdenur, 62, said in an interview. Powell, 67, will discuss inspections in a visit to Brazil slated to include meetings with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim tomorrow, Abdenur said.

``The issue is not if, but how'' the plant will be inspected, Abdenur, Brazil's former representative to the UN agency, known as IAEA, said by telephone yesterday from his Washington home. ``We have a right to preserve our technological achievements.''

The U.S. and UN are concerned Brazil's restrictions on inspections will embolden Iran to limit access to its nuclear programs just as inspectors try to uncover secret bomb-making plans, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said. U.S. President George W. Bush and his opponent in the presidential race, John Kerry, have made nuclear proliferation a central foreign policy issue in this year's election campaign.

``No one is saying Brazil is trying to build nuclear weapons, but this sends a very bad signal,'' Sokolski said in a telephone interview from Washington. ``The Iranians will say, `why should we allow inspections if Brazil won't.'''

The IAEA wants Brazil to allow the installation of cameras that can monitor centrifuges used to enrich, or improve the purity, of uranium. Brazil made a proposal for inspections of the plant in Resende, about 100 miles south of Rio de Janeiro, without necessarily giving full visual access to the centrifuges. The IAEA will send a team to Brazil in mid-October to review that plan, Abdenur said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Smith in Rio de Janeiro at mssmith2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 4, 2004 11:03 EDT