Brasilia - The Brazilian air force has decided to regulate the way its members should proceed in case they see a UFO or hear of one being sighted, the daily Diario Oficial said Tuesday.
Under the regulations published Tuesday, when an unidentified flying object appears or a sighting is reported, officers must register it in the books of the Aviation Command, which in turn must draw up a document to be sent to the National Archive.
In Brazil there are no official records of UFOs, but it is known that during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, intelligence services investigated supposed sightings.
Last year in the old files of the dictatorship were found accounts of Operation Plato, which between the years 1977-1978 unsuccessfully attempted to determine the truth of several reports of UFOs sighted over the states of Maranhão and Para.
Other more recent accounts, also unconfirmed, say that on Jan. 20, 1996, a flying saucer fell in a rural area near Varguinhas, Minas Gerais, and that its occupants alighted from the spacecraft.
Residents of Varguinhas, which has an extraterrestrial being as a symbol, say that aliens were captured by the army, which took them to a military base and then turned them over to a scientific research institute amid the utmost secrecy.
And while there are no records of landings nor direct contacts with creatures from other worlds, Chapada dos Viadeiros National Park, near Brasilia, is said to be home to an "open door to space" through which flying saucers customarily enter and overfly the region.
In this park believers in UFOs tend to meet, passing the daylight hours asleep and at night watching the skies in hopes of observing some spacecraft from another planet.
