The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, poses with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, this Wednesday in Brasilia.Andre Borges (EFE)
The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, was received this Wednesday by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a two-hour meeting that coincides with the serious diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel that the South American president himself opened by comparing the invasion of Gaza with the Holocaust.
After the meeting, Blinken declared to the press that the US and Brazil are “working together bilaterally, regionally and globally.”
And the Brazilian Presidency has reported that 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.
They have also talked about Venezuela.
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, among other colleagues from the world's main economies.
The discrepancies between both countries are evident regarding Gaza and Ukraine.
Although the Israeli intervention in the Strip has already killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, most of them women, children and adolescents, Washington has once again put its close political and military alliance with Israel first and has vetoed for the third time a UN resolution to demand a ceasefire.
Lula demands an immediate ceasefire in addition to the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
In the Russia-Ukraine war, Brazil is in favor of a negotiated solution.
The one in Rio will be the second in-person meeting between Blinken and Lavrov since Russia invaded Ukraine almost two years ago.
The two had a brief face to face at the previous G20 summit in New Delhi.
Lula and Blinken have also addressed the Venezuelan situation.
The American thanked the president for Brazilian efforts to mediate between Venezuela and Guyana.
Washington considers Brazil an ally in its efforts to get Nicolás Maduro to allow democratic elections to be held in the coming months, an objective that at this moment seems unviable given the ironclad refusal of the Chavista authorities to allow the candidate of the opposition, María Corina Machado, attends the elections.
Lula, who in the first months of his mandate strove to remove Maduro from diplomatic ostracism, has in recent weeks maintained an expressive silence on Chavismo's most recent maneuvers to prevent democratic elections.
The Brazilian president has been widely criticized in the local press for his double standards: on the one hand, he denounces Israel's war in Gaza as a genocide.
And, at the same time, he is very lukewarm, at least in public, with the authoritarian movements in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Lula's team considers it a priority to keep channels open with both Latin American regimes in order to discreetly exert pressure on them.
For the United States, it is also important to strengthen cooperation with Brazil on the supply of rare metals and on the troubled Haiti.
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.
He boasts of not having conflicts with practically anyone, which is why the level of acrimony reached in the scuffle with Israel is so striking.
The Netanyahu Government responded to Lula's comparison between Gaza and the extermination of the Jews in a withering manner: he announced that he will not be welcome in the Jewish State until he recants and the Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, scolded the Brazilian ambassador in public. at the Holocaust Museum.
Lula refuses to back down and the crisis has worsened with what Brazilian diplomacy considers lies or misrepresentations until reaching a level of high-voltage verbal confrontation, something not so new in Israel but certainly in Brazil.
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine and the international situation in general are the highlight of the debates on this first day of meeting between the G20 foreign ministers.
The second day will be dedicated to medium-term proposals such as the reform of multilateral organizations.
Among the absences at the Rio meeting, the foreign minister of China, Brazil's partner in the BRICS, stands out.
The event is a preparatory meeting for the summit of heads of state scheduled for November in Rio.
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