At the beginning of 2003, when I was Brazil's Minister of Education, I suggested to the president of the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, the ex-Minister Fernando Lyra, that he coordinate a two-year program to solve the tragedy of the Recife street children.

Last week, I saw my friend the ex-minister again and he said he regrets accepting that suggestion. Since that time the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation has been trying, without success, to attract the support necessary.

After confronting so many difficulties in setting the program in motion, Fernando Lyra considers that we erred in defining the deadline to resolve the situation of those boys and girls.

I do not think we were wrong. Two years is sufficient time for governments who desire to confront this problem. And children do not wait to grow up until after the government decides to take an interest in them.

But in Brazil we unfortunately set deadlines to accomplish that which serves the richest portion of the population while considering it a mistake to do this to meet the needs of the poor population.

When President Juscelino Kubitschek decided to construct Brasília, he did not compromise and build only half. He promised to inaugurate it in five years.

When the military regime decided to build the largest hydroelectric plant in the world, Itaipu, the pledge was not to construct only a part, or to finish that monumental work in 50 years. The regime proposed to deliver it, completed, in the short term of a decade.

In 2003, the Ministry of Education set a four-year goal to eliminate illiteracy in young people and adults. And it encountered much resistance within the government itself because setting a deadline for "such an ambitious" task was said to be impossible.

Beginning in 2004, therefore, the expression "eradication of illiteracy" was eliminated from the ministry dictionary. The government opted for a literacy program with no goals, no promises, and no risk of the obligation to apologize.

The Brazilian elite must lose their immoral fear of setting goals to meet to the needs of the people and must learn to apologize if they are unable to meet these goals.

They must stop thinking that the problem of Recife street children is an eternal one, or that someday it will simply resolve itself.

This is why I think that Fernando Lyra should not have regretted accepting my challenge to retrieve all the boys and girls from the streets of Recife. Not only should two years have been sufficient, it is too long to take to guarantee these children a future.

If we did not secure the necessary support, if we did not succeed in uniting the local governments of the Recife metropolitan area, or involving civil society, the time has come for Fernando Lyra to apologize, not to regret.

As for me, I apologize to all those children: for not having had the political competency to continue as minister, for not having made speeches in the Senate calling for actions by the Ministry, the Foundation, the Recife city government.

I apologize but I do not regret setting the deadline of two years. And I even apologize for thinking that two years was a reasonable amount of time, instead of one year, or six months. Because any longer than this is an eternity in the life of a child.

Imagine if one of our children were lost in the street and the government asked for two years to locate and retrieve the child from it, or if it regretted having set that deadline. No one would accept this.

But when it comes to children of the poor, instead of apologizing, we have regrets. Apologies are lacking from the mouths of our leaders.

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage - www.cristovam.com.br - and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov-br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.

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