New Delhi: Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday, only to find they had already taken the picture without him. Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers, according to AFP.
World leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron walked down a red-carpeted ramp at Rio’s stunning bayside Museum of Modern Art to the group photo set-up. They took to a stage, chatted and joked as they gathered to pose against the backdrop of the Brazilian city’s iconic Sugarloaf Mountain. The snap was over in a second.
Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then came in from another direction, after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit but it was too late and the other leaders had already dispersed.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also missed the picture. She, Biden and Trudeau formed a separate huddle.
“Due to logistical issues, they took the photo early before all the leaders had arrived. So a number of the leaders weren’t actually there,” a US official said on condition of anonymity, the report added.
US officials denied that Biden missed the photo, officially for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s launch of an alliance to curb world hunger — to avoid appearing alongside Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.