Brazil wants `tickets for guns` deal at 2014 World Cup
Baku, December 16 (AZERTAC). FIFA is considering a proposal to exchange World Cup 2014 tickets for guns, The Guardian reports. Brazil`s justice ministry has submitted plans to football`s governing body which would see tickets for the showpiece event made available for people who surrender their weapons to the government. The ministry also intends to provide shirts and footballs signed by World Cup teams in exchange for guns, and to recycle destroyed weapons into goalposts that would be used for the tournament. The initiatives are part of a campaign to make the Brazil 2014 theme "For a world without guns." Brazilian Democratic Movement MP Renan Filho told Congress last month: "In South Africa the theme was the fight against Aids. Here we must spread the culture of peace and disarmament. We are still the country that most kills with firearms." The movement was given urgency by the worst school massacre in Brazilian history, when 12 children were shot dead in May. However, Fifa General Secretary Jerome Valcke has angered campaigners with a dismissive "joke", according to Globoesporte. "I will not say we`ll exchange all the weapons for tickets," said Valcke, "because with the amount of weapons in Brazil we will not have enough tickets." Fifa and the Brazilian parliament have clashed repeatedly as they seek to finalise the 2014 World Cup legislation, which Valcke recently claimed should have been passed in 2007. Tickets for guns is only one of many ideas put forward. The government has agreed to overturn a ban on selling alcohol in stadia, but has secured a deal making 300,000 tickets available at a discounted price, half of which would be reserved for students and the elderly. Fifa`s demand for exclusive rights to sales around the various stadia is still proving problematic. Congressman Vicente Candido, rapporteur for the 2014 World Cup Law, has objected to shutting shops in the area, saying this would be "against the Brazilian Constitution".
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