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The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, is finally willing to receive external help to fight the Amazon fires, provided that his government is the one who manages the resources, his spokesman announced Tuesday, lowering the tone of a bitter dispute with the president French, Emmanuel Macron.

The spokesman Otávio Rego Barros has also indicated that the president is ready to participate in a regional summit of affected countries, proposed by Peru and Colombia . "The Brazilian Government ... is open to receiving financial support from organizations and even countries," provided that this "does not offend Brazilian sovereignty and resource management is under our responsibility," said Rego Barros.

On Monday, the chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni , had announced the rejection of the aid offered by the G7 of the major Western powers; and on Tuesday morning Bolsonaro conditioned the receipt of funds to a request for apologies from Macron, for what he considered personal "insults" and grievances to Brazilian sovereignty.

Shortly before the announcement of his change of position, the president of the extreme right has met with the governors of the nine states of the Amazon region - most of them from the right and two from his own party - who expressed concern about the position of Bolsonaro, which commits vital funds for the preservation of the largest rainforest in the world.

One of them also highlighted the importance of the Amazon Fund , financed by Norway and Germany , currently paralyzed by the management changes that the Brazilian government intends to introduce.

"The president does not back down"

Rego Barros says that Bolsonaro's last decision could not be interpreted in any way as a "setback." "The president does not back down. He is moving towards the welfare of society," he explained.

Bolsonaro has welcomed the proposal of Peru and Colombia to convene an emergency meeting on September 6 in Leticia (triple border between those two countries and Brazil) to sign a pact and coordinate actions in defense of the Amazon. "Yes, [Bolsonaro] will participate in these activities. South American cooperation in that fight is essential," said Rego Barros.

The satellite data of the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) account for 82,285 fire points from January to Monday afternoon in Brazil, 51.9% in the Amazon rainforest. The total figure marks an increase of 80% over the same period of 2018.

Brazil had deployed 2,500 soldiers, hundreds of vehicles and 15 aircraft , including two Hercules C-130 tankers, to control the flames until Monday.

In the Rondonia state, one of the most affected by fires and smoke, the situation showed signs of improvement after some rains in recent days. On the route between Porto Velho, the capital of Rondonia, and Abuná, a small town with low houses on the border with Bolivia, there are no longer flames, but a lot of burned land and lonely trees amid deforested areas.

"Now the situation of the burned areas has improved, because it has rained several times in recent days," explains Sandra Mara, owner of an ice cream shop in Abuná. Mara exposes the complexity of the situation for the population: "People buy land to feed the cattle. It's a big problem. I don't know what the solution is," he reflects.

Question of sovereignty

"First, Mr. Macron must withdraw the insults against me. First he called me a liar" and then said "that our sovereignty in the Amazon is an open question," Bolsonaro told reporters in the morning asking him about the possibility of that Brazil finally accept the $ 20 million aid offered by the G7 to the countries affected by the Amazon fires.

Macron spoke on Monday of the opportunity to confer an "international statute" on the Amazon rainforest, in case "a sovereign state took concrete measures clearly contrary to the interest of the entire planet." The French presidency had previously stated that Bolsonaro "lied" when he pledged to respect the commitments to fight climate change.

The bilateral tension took personal dimensions when Bolsonaro made a comment on Facebook over the weekend that ended with a laugh at an injurious message against Brigitte Macron , first lady of France. Macron called the comments "extraordinarily disrespectful."

Brazilian Internet users then flooded the networks repudiating the president's attitude with the hashtag #DisculpaBrigitte .

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