Faced with US gestures for President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to attend the Summit of the Americas, in Los Angeles, Foreign Minister Carlos França said that the leaders’ meeting so far had “low attendance” and that the level of representation of the Brazilian government is not yet defined.
The statements were made at a public hearing at the Foreign Relations Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, held this Wednesday (18). “There is still no definition, on the part of the Presidency of the Republic, on what will be our level of participation in this ninth Summit of the Americas, but I must say that it is a summit that has had, apparently, at first, a low adherence”, stated.
as revealed to Sheet, President Joe Biden called an emissary to try to convince Bolsonaro to attend the meeting scheduled for early June. The chosen one was former senator Christopher Dodd, who had a scheduled meeting with the Brazilian leader on Friday (20), but the Americans should try to reschedule the agenda for the next few days because Dodd was diagnosed with Covid, according to interlocutors.
The Summit of the Americas was designed by Washington to symbolize the return of US leadership in Latin American affairs, after the presidency of Donald Trump, during which issues in the region took a back seat — at the last summit, in 2018, the Republican did not go to Lima, Peru, thus becoming the first American leader to miss the event.
The meeting, however, runs the risk of ending up empty due to signals from Bolsonaro and the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that they do not intend to attend.
Obrador said last week he would only go to the summit if the US invites the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, dictatorships considered pariahs by Washington.
So, before coming to Brazil, Dodd also had an agenda in Mexico, with the same objective of convincing a heavyweight leader to reverse his decision not to go to Los Angeles. Due to the coronavirus infection, however, he held the conversation with Obrador via video conference.
“It is natural that when a country convenes a summit, it sends emissaries and special envoys to reinforce the invitation and ensure participation at the highest possible level,” France said on Wednesday, also saying that, as far as he knew, the visit of Dodd to Brazil is not confirmed.
According to different interlocutors, a series of factors weigh on Bolsonaro’s lack of interest in traveling to the US at this time. The main one is the domestic scenario in Brazil. The president is in the pre-campaign for reelection and has shown resistance to leaving the country. Although he has sketched a reaction in the latest polls, he is still behind former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
For diplomacy, scheduling a meeting with Biden under these conditions runs the risk of Bolsonaro giving up the trip at the last minute, which would create embarrassment with the leader of the most important power in the world.
Although a meeting with the American president is desired by members of the government — a way of reinforcing the argument that Brazil is not isolated —, the photo with the Democrat is seen by the president’s pre-campaign as something of little electoral value, since the Brazilian is an ally of Donald Trump.
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