Paris

Brazil's ambassador to France, Luis Fernando Serra, says the verbal fight between Brazil and France over the management of the Amazon fires has gotten out of hand in recent days. Now, he said it's time to "turn the page."

"There have been excesses on both sides," he said, referring to the insults of Brazilian ministers and President Jair Bolsonaro himself to French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron, whom Serra described on French TV on Monday ( 26) as "very beautiful, intelligent, elegant and charming."

Luís Fernando de Andrade Serra (Foto: Marcos Oliveira/Agência Senado) - Marcos Oliveira/Agência Senado

The ambassador endorses Bolsonaro's criticism of the alleged international interference in the forest region. The president said last week that his French counterpart expressed "colonialist mentality" in portraying the situation as an "international crisis."

It also ratified the distrust speech about NGOs operating in the region. "You can suspect you have a hidden agenda when you see 300 NGOs in the Amazon and zero in the Northeast. Why don't 55 million Northeasts deserve an NGO and 25 million in the Amazon deserved 300?"

That said, we must forget about the feud with France, defends Serra, in the name of the "extraordinary [common] heritage," of a 500-year bilateral relationship that "is the most complete that Brazil can have with a European country."

Translated by Kiratiana Freelon

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