According to a report from the Brazilian Ministry of Defense, which leaked to the press on Friday February 7, France represents a military threat to the country for the next 20 years, due to disputes over the Amazon.

The Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo released extracts from this 40-page document entitled "Defense Scenarios 2040", based on the forecasts of 500 members of the Brazilian military elite during the second half of 2019.

The report includes, according to the Brazilian newspaper, "realistic geopolitical considerations", but also "somewhat delusional hypotheses", such as that of an attack on the SARS virus by "ultranationalists of Southeast Asia" during the Rock festival in Rio in 2039.

French forces intervening in Guyana

France is the only country cited as constituting a threat in the four main scenarios mentioned in the report.

In one of them, the document provides, still according to the newspaper, that Paris could "formalize in 2035 a request for intervention by the UN" in the territories of the indigenous Yanomami tribe, on the border with Venezuela, with "a great mobilization of French forces in Guyana".

With this overseas department which shelters a portion of the Amazonian forest, France shares a border of 730 km with Brazil.

The French Embassy in Brazil joked on Twitter about "the limitless imagination of the authors of this report".

pic.twitter.com/l8U8b63awy

- France in Brazil (@franceaubresil) February 7, 2020


"France has for decades maintained close, friendly, daily cooperation relations with the Brazilian army," commented the embassy, ​​stressing, in Portuguese, that Brazil "is Paris' main strategic partner" in Latin America.

Diplomatic relations between France and Brazil strained considerably last August, at a time when images of forest fires in the Amazon caused great international emotion.

During a G7 summit, Emmanuel Macron called for a "mobilization of all powers" to defend the Amazon, "the common good" of the planet.

His Brazilian counterpart had been ulcerated, criticizing a "colonialist mentality" and an attempt to undermine the sovereignty of Brazil.

With AFP

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