BRASILIA, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's newly-appointed Environment Minister Carlos Minc said Sunday that he would propose making the country's armed forces play a more active role in protecting national parks, Indian reserves and the Amazon rain forest.

    Minc, who is scheduled to take up the post from his predecessor Marina Silva Monday, is expected to make his proposal during his Monday's meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

    The new environment minister said President Lula would negotiate his proposal with the army. "The president is the chief-in-command of the armed forces. Internal laws may come together in defense and conservation of these special areas," he added.

    The Amazon "will not become coal," Minc noted. "We will continue with the same policies that the former minister Marina Silva had insisted. We will also do many other things that she was unable to accomplish and that we now have the conditions to fulfill." he said.

    Minc, a co-founder of the Green Party in Brazil and currently Rio de Janeiro state's environment secretary, will bring his team of environmental protection professionals to Brasilia to fulfill his plan.

    The Amazon rain forest, which borders several South American neighbors and is home to 27 million people out of Brazil's total population of 185 million, is facing the risks of excessive deforestation these years.