BELEM, Brazil —  A global counterculture gathering dedicated partly to preserving the world's rain forests has become a bureaucratic battleground for two Brazilian officials squabbling over what to do with the vast Amazon region.

Environment Minister Carlos Minc used the World Social Forum that ends Sunday to take shots at Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes, who is accused by environmentalists of encouraging soy and sugar cane plantations that are blamed for much deforestation.

"Our problem is not with agriculture, it is with Minister Stephanes," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters this week at the social forum.

Stephanes countered by saying that "either he (Minc) understands nothing, or he isn't behaving correctly with me."

The feud forced President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to order the ministers to stop talking about one another in public, according to accounts in Brazil's leading newspapers, citing anonymous aides close to Silva.

Minc declined to be interviewed this week at the forum, while calls to the agriculture ministry were not returned. Stephanes had said in the Brazilian press earlier this week he was through talking about the matter.

At issue is the balance between preservation and economic deveolopment in the Amazon, whose survival is crucial in the struggle against global climate change, according to many climate scientists.

They say the cutting or burning of Amazon trees releases an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide _ 80 percent of Brazil's greenhouse gases _ into the atmosphere every year.

Environmentalists have long accused Stephanes and Silva of leaning too far toward the expansion of farms that lead to deforestation.

Silva told reporters at the forum this week that he is pushing for sustainable development of the region, "to work in the correct manner with the forest."

Minc's ministry wants to maintain or toughen a requirement that Amazon landowners leave at least 20 percent of their property as forest. Stephanes wants that rule relaxed.

Sen. Marina Silva resigned as environment minister last May _ also after complaining that Stephanes and other ministries were hindering her efforts to protect the Amazon. That prompted the president _ no relation _ to vow to strengthen environmental protection.

The senator refused to directly criticize the president this week, but said the problems she faced "have just continued."

"I think it is the beginning of a new phase of internal political discomfort," she told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the social forum.

Greenpeace campaigner Andre Muggiati said a bigger issue is the fight for cash.

"The environment ministry is a weak ministry," he said, noting that the agriculture ministry budget is around $22 billion a year while that of the environment ministry is some $174 million.

"How can the ministry of environment build strong measures for protection when the agriculture ministry right across the street is spending billions in an activity that has a strong impact on the environment?" Muggiati said.

Tens of thousands of activists attended the forum, created in 2001 as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum being held in Davos, Switzerland.

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