Published 15:23 IST, September 3rd 2019
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro to skip Amazon wildfire summit
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro not to go to Amazon summit due to ill-health, instead will go to UN General Assembly and raise Amazon fire issue at world stage.
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Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro will skip the regional summit to discuss the flames raging across the Amazon as he has to prepare for a surgery a week from now. The extreme right president has been severely criticised over Amazon deforestation and a late response to rapidly spreading fires that have hit the rainforest.
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Bolsonaro to not go due to ill-health
Bolsonaro is expected to undergo surgery on Sunday to address an incisional hernia and has to prepare accordingly. The Brazilian President has to start a fluid-only regimen beginning Friday, the same day as the summit in Colombia. This made his attendence infeasible, said representative Otavio Rego Barros. Brazil has considered sending a substitute or asking that the summit be delayed, said the representative. This is his fourth surgery since he was wounded almost a year prior during the presidential battle. Doctors said Bolsonaro would require 10 days' rest following the procedure, which would be performed in Sao Paulo.
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"Will show up before the United Nations"
On September 2, the president promised to defend his questionable Amazonpolicies at the UN General Assembly regardless of whether he needed to do so ''in a wheelchair. "I will show up before the UN even in a wheelchair, on a stretcher. I will show up in light of the fact that I need to discuss the Amazon," Bolsonaro told press outside his official residence. Brazil customarily makes the main discourse at the General Assembly meeting, set for September 24. Reacting to the analysis of his strategy, Bolsonaro has blamed France and Germany for endeavoring to purchase Brazil's power after the G7 gathering of rich majority rules systems offered $20 million in Amazon fire help.
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Background of Amazon Fire debate
In the midst of worldwide concern about raging flames in the Amazon, Brazil's administration whined prior in August that it was being targetted in a slanderous attack by those who allege that President Jair Bolsonaro isn't doing what's necessary to control far-reaching deforestation. The risk to what some call "the lungs of the planet" has lit a severe contest about who is at fault. Bolsonaro has depicted Brazil's rainforest insurance as a snag to financial advancement and has exchanged Twitter jibes in August with France's leader over the flames.
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12:24 IST, September 3rd 2019