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Gulf News | Brasilia: Brazil's Supreme Court sided on Thursday with Amazonian Indians in a land dispute some have called critical for determining the future of the rainforest that sprawls the size of Western Europe.

The court ruling upholds the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation for 18,000 Indians who lay claim to their ancestral land, despite a handful of large-scale farmers who also occupy the territory in the northernmost reaches of Amazon jungle bordering Venezuela.

The dispute over the 4.2 million acre (1.7 million hectare) reservation turned violent last year when authorities tried to evict the farmers.

The Supreme Court president said it was a precedent-setting ruling for Indian land rights.

Though the dispute involves only a few thousand people in remote Roraima state, it represents a large divide among Brazilians over land development and sovereignty.

While the ruling solidifies Indian rights, detractors said it does nothing to prevent another violent outbreak.

"There is no peaceful solution," Nelson Itikawa, president of the Roraima Rice Growers Association, told the government's Agencia Brasil news service. "It's possible there will be a conflict - there are people who will lose control."

Roraima leaders - including an Army general who threatened to defend the farmers in defiance of national law, have said that leaving the reservation in Indian hands is a threat to national security and strangles economic growth in the sparsely populated state.

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