Brasilia (AFP)
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has canceled for medical reasons his participation in a regional summit on fires in the Amazon scheduled for Friday in Colombia, announced Monday his spokesman.
"President must follow a liquid-based diet from Friday", two days before undergoing surgery in the abdomen, making his trip "virtually unachievable", said Bolsonaro's spokesman , Otavio Rego Barros.
He added that Brazil will send a "replacement" or request the postponement of the scheduled meeting in Leticia, a city located in the Colombian Amazon on the triple border between Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
This summit was proposed by Peru and Colombia on August 27, when fires in the Amazon, the largest tropical forest in the world, most of which is located in Brazil, caused concern of the international community.
Jair Bolsonaro is to be operated on Sunday for the fourth time since the stabbing bombing that nearly cost him his life during his election campaign on September 6, 2018.
He has to be reoperated for "incisional hernia" in the abdomen, that is to say an incision of the abdominal wall, followed by ten days of convalescence, according to his doctors at a large hospital in Sao Paulo (South is).
Bolsonaro said on Monday that the move will not prevent him from traveling to New York to defend Brazil's position on the Amazon at the UN General Assembly on September 24.
"I will go to the UN even if it must be in a wheelchair or a stretcher, I will go because I want to talk about the Amazon," said the president in Brasilia in front of journalists.
The fires raging in various parts of the Amazon have put Brazil under intense international pressure. They provoked a diplomatic crisis with France, whose president Emmanuel Macron declared that the question of the sovereignty of the largest tropical forest in the world was open because it is essential in the climatic regulation of the whole planet.
Mr. Bolsonaro has repeatedly conditioned Brazil's acceptance of the $ 20 million aid provided by the G7 countries to fight fires to a retraction of Mr. Macron.
"We will not accept the alms of any country in the world on the pretext of protecting the Amazon," insisted Jair Bolsonaro on Monday.
Between January and Sunday, the satellites of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) recorded 91,891 fire departures in Brazil, a record for this period since 2010. About 52% of these fires occurred in Amazon. A total of 1,390 fire starts were recorded for Sunday alone.
Jair Bolsonaro has not been to the Amazon since the outbreak of the current crisis, and only one minister in his government has so far flown over an area affected by forest fires.
The far-right president has supported mining activities in indigenous reserves and other protected areas since he took office, and believes that countries are taking advantage of the preservation of the Amazon to interfere and challenge Brazilian sovereignty.
© 2019 AFP