How to execute commands within Rake tasks?

I have the rake tasks in my rails application. i want to run a commandline commands with in rake task. how can i do this. i tried by the following but fails

desc "Sending the newsletter to all the users"
task :sending_mail do
  run "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && ar_sendmail -o -t NewsLetters -v"
  system "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && ar_sendmail -o -t NewsLetters -v &"
end

The above run command throws run method undefined & System command not throwing any errors but not executed.