BRASILIA: Brazilian officials have yet to receive visas to attend the UN General Assembly in New York next week, the foreign ministry said Monday, as trade and diplomatic ties with Washington remain strained.
The trial and conviction of Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro angered his ally Donald Trump, the US president who has already slapped a 50-percent tariff on Brazilian imports.
“We have received information from the US government that the visas have not yet been granted. They are being processed,” foreign ministry official Marcelo Marotta Viegas told a press conference.
He said a refusal to grant the visas would be a “legal violation” by the United States.
Viegas did not say how many visas were pending approval.
“It’s concerning,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said of the visa delay.
Bolsonaro was sentenced last week to 27 years in prison for a botched coup attempt.
Aside from the tariffs, Washington has also revoked the visas of several Brazilian Supreme Court judges and a government minister.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that further US action could be expected to pressure Brazil over Bolsonaro’s conviction.
“We’ll have some announcements in the next week or so about what additional steps we intend to take,” Rubio told Fox News from Jerusalem on Monday.
Brazilian officials yet to receive US visas for UN assembly
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Brazilian officials yet to receive US visas for UN assembly
- Foreign ministry official Marcelo Marotta said a refusal to grant the visas would be a “legal violation” by the US
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
