Brazil’s president named a new foreign minister on Monday night following an embarrassing diplomatic manoeuvre involving neighbouring Bolivia.
The resignation of Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota was announced in a terse, two-paragraph statement from the office of President Dilma Rousseff.
The statement named Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, a career diplomat and most recently Brazil’s head of mission at the United Nations, as the new foreign minister. He served only two months as the head of Brazil’s UN delegation.
A Rousseff spokeswoman said Patriota, a former ambassador to the US, would now take the top spot at the UN
The shake-up at Brazil’s foreign ministry came one day after Bolivian Sen. Roger Pinto was spirited into Brazil after spending 452 days in the Brazilian Embassy in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz.
Pinto, a member of Bolivia’s small right-wing opposition bloc in congress, accuses President Evo Morales’ government of corruption, though he has provided no evidence. He said he sought asylum in Brazil’s embassy after he and his family received death threats.
Bolivia’s government says Pinto’s exile is an opposition smear campaign against Morales. It accuses Pinto of corruption and wants him on criminal charges including economic damage to the state from when he was governor of the northern state of Pando, which borders Brazil.