President Lula receives Blinken in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel over Gaza. Lula has insisted on the urgency of ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and that both have agreed on the need to create a Palestinian State.
Blinken, who met with Lula in Brasilia, traveled to Rio de Janeiro to participate in a meeting of G-20 foreign ministers in the afternoon with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. Brazil holds the rotating presidency of the G20 until December. It is one of the few highly populated countries, perhaps the only one that has good relations with all the major international powers.