France's top diplomat played down on Sunday a last-minute refusal by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to meet him during a recent visit, when he angered the South American leader by meeting with NGOs which have been critical of Brazil's new government. Bolsonaro cancelled his meeting with Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian last Monday, and instead got a haircut that he broadcast live on Facebook.
"We all know the constraints that heads of state have on their agendas. Evidently it appears there was a capillary emergency," Le Drian told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an interview. "This isn't something I have to worry about," he ironised, a reference to his own near-baldness. Le Drian said he considered his trip was "very positive" nonetheless.
"I held talks with my counterpart (Ernesto Araujo), with representatives of Brazilian civil society, in particular NGOs, but also with business leaders," he said. "It is in France's interests to speak with Brazil, and with all Brazilians," he added. Bolsonaro, who has made no secret of his skepticism over climate change, has bristled at European criticism, led by France and Germany, of rampant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. He had already warned that he wouldn't accept any lessons from the French minister on the environmental front.