Secretary Antony J. Blinken At a Press Availability
US Department of State
Remarks to the Press
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State
JW Marriott Hotel
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
February 22, 2024
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, everyone. First, let me say what a pleasure it is to be here in Brazil - first in Brasília, now here in Rio. And as I think many of you know, this is the 200th anniversary this year of diplomatic relations between the United States and Brazil, something that we will be highlighting and celebrating throughout the rest of the year.
It's exactly a year ago that the President and President Lula met, and I think one of the things that stood out from that meeting was a common desire, a common objective, a common goal to leave the next generation a better future. Those were President Lula's words; it's also President Biden's commitment. And I think what we're seeing in so many different areas is the United States and Brazil working closely together to do just that.
I had the pleasure and privilege of spending some time with President Lula yesterday in Brasília. I'm grateful to him for the time that he dedicated and to the depth and richness of the conversation we had. And as I reflected on what we talked about, so much of it was this common agenda between our countries to try to build effectively a better future for our people, focusing on the areas and on the issues that really have an impact in their daily lives.
We're all seized with the obligation of contending with the one existential threat to humanity, and that's climate change. And our countries have been leaders on that. Of course, the rainforest - the Amazon - is one of the world's greatest natural resources when it comes to actually effectively dealing with climate change carbon emissions. President Lula put it this way when he was at the White House with President Biden: "To take care of the Amazon rainforest today is to take of the planet Earth. And to take care of the planet Earth is to take care of our own [survival]." I don't think anyone could put it any better.
So the United States is working side by side with Brazil to support its efforts to preserve the rainforest, to combat deforestation. We're putting resources into that; we're engaged with many other countries around the world to encourage them to participate. And with USAID and other organizations in the U.S. Government, we're working in very practical, concrete ways to help with - support the management and preservation of the rainforest.
In 2025, Brazil will head up the COP, COP30, in Belém. This is a very important opportunity to advance progress on the many different ways in which all of us are dealing with climate change, and we applaud Brazil's leadership.
Another area where Brazil is leading and the United States has partnered with Brazil is on dealing with the challenge of food insecurity and global hunger. Here I'm proud of the fact the United States has invested billions of dollars over the last few years, both to deal with emergency situations that we face - the world has faced - as a result of climate change, COVID, and conflict, including Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Since 2021, the United States has invested $17.5 billion dollars in trying to support food security for people around the world. But it's not only the emergency assistance that counts, and I discussed this with President Lula. It's the work we are doing to invest in productive capacity around the world for countries from Africa to Latin America to well beyond. That is the answer to the challenge of food insecurity. We have many initiatives under way that are doing just that - adapting our agricultural systems, our food production systems.
With Brazil, we have a partnership to bring artificial intelligence and other technologies to improve the soil in countries. And one of the things that we found and is at the heart of one of our own major new initiatives - VACS, our Vision for Adapted Crops and Soil - is when you have resilient and nutritious seeds resilient to climate change and other extreme weather patterns, when you have strong soil, anything is possible.
And this initiative with Brazil is working to do just that, and that means that what we then put into the ground on top of the seeds and soil, like fertilizer, will be much more effective. So we're working to develop crops that use nutrients more efficiently, more effectively, lowering costs, lowering dependencies, and at the same time lowering emissions. It's joined with climate change. So another powerful example of where our two countries are working together in common purpose.
And then, of course, President Biden, President Lula are joined profoundly by their commitment to protecting worker rights, to defending and strengthening labor around the world. I think both presidents see it the same way. Workers, labor are at the heart of our successes as countries; we are both building economies from the bottom up and the middle out. Here again, the Partnership for Workers' Rights that the two presidents signed - stopping worker exploitation, focusing on forced labor, on child labor, promoting rights around the world - here again, our countries are joined.
And we have a joint action plan as well to eliminate racial and ethnic discrimination and promote equality, equitable access to education, to health care, to justice, particularly for people of African and indigenous origin.
I mention all of this because it was really at the heart of the conversation that I had with President Lula yesterday, and aspects are also at the heart of the G20 agenda, which Brazil is leading. And the other main purpose of this visit was to take part in a meeting with the foreign ministers led by Foreign Minister Vieira to prepare the agenda for the leaders when they have the meeting of the G20 leadership toward the end of this year. Here again, Brazil and the United States are working very closely together as partners, and it's the United States purpose in this to support and make a success of Brazil's presidency of the G20.
In all of the areas of focus that Brazil has set forward - whether, again, it comes to advancing the rights of workers and laborers, whether it comes to dealing with climate change, food security, whether it comes to reforming the institutions that shape how countries interact around the world - we are working hand in hand with Brazil on that.
Now, the scope, the scale of some of these global challenges is immense, and I know that there are times when it feels like those challenges are outpacing our collective capacity to tackle them. But I think what the G20 can demonstrate - it's demonstrated it in the past and I believe it will demonstrate it in the future - is that, no, we actually do have the capacity when we're working together, to effectively meet the moment, to meet the challenges that we're facing, to actually address the needs of the people that we represent.
The United States, for its part, is working to do that, and we had some discussion of these issues in the context of the G20.
On Ukraine, there is a strong, palpable desire among virtually all of the G20 for the Russian aggression to end and for peace to prevail in a way that upholds the rights of Ukrainians to their freedom, to their future, to the territorial integrity of their country. And that was very clear in the meetings that we had over the last two days.
The conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas - we're focused intensely on trying to get an agreement that results in the release of the remaining hostages and that produces an extended humanitarian ceasefire. And again, those are goals that I think virtually everyone in the G20 shares.
Haiti - an area that is close to home and close to the hearts of Americans and Brazilians alike - we see a situation that continues to deteriorate, particularly when it comes to the profound insecurity as a result of gangs that are running rampant not only in Port-au-Prince but increasingly beyond. We see a state that's on the verge of becoming a failed state, and the result is that people are suffering tremendously - not only from the violence, including sexual violence, but just from the inability to get the basic necessities of life.
Today we had a meeting that involved a number of countries, all of whom will be contributing to the mission to help provide renewed security for Haiti that was endorsed by the United Nations last fall and that we're now making - making real. We have a commitment from Kenya to lead this effort in support of the Haitian National Police, and today we had a - as I said, a meeting with well more than a dozen countries, each of whom is contributing or plans to contribute significantly to this mission with personnel, with equipment, with training, and with financial resources. And I think today we had at least another $120 million committed to that effort.
We're working together to deal with irregular migration, a challenge that countries around the world are facing in this moment. This is, simply put, a challenge of historic proportions. We see more people on the move now around the planet - not only in our own hemisphere, but around the planet - more people than ever before since we've been recording these numbers. But here again, we're working collectively to try to address the challenge.
And then in so many other places around the world where there is conflict, where there is insecurity, the United States, working with other countries, is trying to make a change and trying to make a difference - whether it's in Sudan, whether it's in the eastern DRC, Ethiopia, Somalia. We're working in all of these places to try to deal with insecurity and also, more broadly in Africa, with a very strong, affirmative agenda which I was able to highlight on my recent visit.
Finally, beyond security, we are putting together new coalitions of countries and organizations to meet shared challenges in new ways. We have a global partnership now to direct investment in infrastructure in ways that create a race to the top, not a race to the bottom - to make sure that as we pursue infrastructure projects in countries around the world and direct investment in that direction, we're doing it in a way that doesn't saddle countries with debt, that respects the rights of workers, the environment, transparency. That coalition - including here in Brazil - is increasingly focused on concrete projects and putting the resources into them.
We have countries - well more than a hundred countries - that have come together to meet a Global Methane Pledge, the largest single contributor to global warming, to cut emissions by 30 - methane emissions 30 percent by 2030. That will have a powerful impact.
And as I've discussed many times, we now have a global coalition to deal with what is now the number one killer of Americans at age 18 to 49: synthetic opioids - in the case of the United States, fentanyl, but in the case of many other countries, we see methamphetamines, we see ketamine, we see tramadol. This is one of the new challenges that increasingly countries around the world are being attentive to, because they need to be. And this was also a subject at the G20.
Finally, even as we're trying to work on issues of peace and security, even as we're dealing with these broad transnational challenges that no one country can effectively deal with alone, we also have to be reinvesting in and updating the international institutions that bring us all together to deal with these challenges. That was the subject of today's session of the G20. We have to have institutions that are more reflective of the world as it is today, not the world as it was when these institutions were created, most of them 80 years ago. We have to have institutions that are more responsive and more effective in meeting the challenges of today.
So the United States has been leading in these efforts too. We're leading the effort to expand the United Nations Security Council, both in terms of permanent and non-permanent members, so that it better reflects today's world, today's realities. We're looking and working to sharpen the UN's focus on the most critical emerging issues of the day and emerging opportunities, starting with artificial intelligence. The resolution that we have before the United Nations General Assembly is a way to set a foundation to make sure that artificial intelligence is used in a way that is safe, that's trustworthy, and that actually advances progress on issues that matter to people, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
We're working to make the international financial institutions more responsive, more effective, more efficient in ways that create access to capital for countries that need it, to concessional financing, and to dealing with the huge debt burdens that so many countries face. We're amplifying the voice of emerging markets and developing countries throughout these institutions. And we're working as well to mobilize private capital to make sure that it's directed the right places in the right ways.
In all of these ways, the United States is helping to lead the effort to make sure that the institutions that bring us together and where we're working together are more reflective of today's world and more effective in meeting its challenges. This is in so many ways a moment of tremendous testing for all of us. In the more then 30 years that I've been engaged in these issues in government, I can't think of a time when there's been a greater multiplicity, a greater complexity, a greater interconnectedness of the challenges we're facing. And I think that only underscores the importance of doing more than ever before in working together, in cooperating, in coordinating, in communicating.
The powerful reality is this: No one country alone has the capacity to deal with these challenges effectively. But when we work together, when we focus our efforts on common goals, I think we've demonstrated in the past and we will demonstrate in the future that there's nothing we can't actually achieve. Thank you.
MR PATEL: We'll first go to Courtney McBride from Bloomberg News.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Courtney, I'm getting my pen out in case there are multiple questions, and —
QUESTION: I'll try to keep it brief and onto one topic, Mr. Secretary. Thanks. Despite the U.S. and other countries' efforts to isolate Russia, which yesterday you called the world's leading exporter of instability, it remains actively engaged on the global stage, including with Foreign Minister Lavrov's participation in this week's ministerial. So how does that fact complicate efforts to respond collectively to global challenges, and how did it affect this week's meetings?
And then continuing on Russia, President Biden said that new sanctions are coming tomorrow in connection with the two-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as the death of Aleksey Navalny. The Kremlin reportedly has warned Navalny's widow not to return to Russia, and his mother is complaining that the Russian Government is pressuring her into a secret burial. How do the U.S. and its allies and partners hope to influence or alter Russia's behavior when previous sanctions have not had that effect? And further, is a state sponsor of terrorism designation a possible way to further influence Russia? Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Great. Thanks, Courtney. So first, I think, again, if you were in the room over the last two days, when it came to, for example, the discussions that we had about the Russian aggression against Ukraine - and not just against Ukraine, against the very principles that are at the heart of the international system that we were here to talk about and hopefully to strengthen - I think if you were in that room, as Foreign Minister Lavrov was, you heard a very strong chorus coming from not - as I said, not just the G7 countries within the G20, but from many others as well, about the imperative of ending the Russian aggression, restoring peace, making sure that Ukrainians are the ones who decide their own future, preserving the territorial integrity of the country.
That's increasingly clear, so I think in a sense it's actually quite a useful reminder to Russia about what virtually the entire world thinks of this aggression and the strong desire to see it end.
And again, there are two reasons for that. One is the fact that it's an aggression against the principles at the heart of the system. The other is that it's had consequences for countries and people around the world - rising food prices, rising energy prices that have afflicted people largely because of this Russian aggression.
Now, we've been able to address that in increasingly effective ways, including Ukraine, by pushing the Russian navy back and getting access to the Black Sea again. Exports through the Black Sea from Ukraine now exceed what they were before the Russian aggression in February of 2022, but I think countries around the world are seeing the impact it's having on them, and it's another reason they want it to stop.
In terms of new measures and additional sanctions, stay tuned. They will be forthcoming. And I'd just say this about Mr. Navalny, someone truly heroic in his life, in his work. But the fact that Vladimir Putin saw it necessary to persecute, poison, and imprison one man speaks volumes not about Russia's strength under Putin, but its weakness. And I think, again, countries around the world, including in the G20, were very clear about what they thought about what happened to Mr. Navalny.
MR PATEL: We'll go to Fernando David with Band TV.
QUESTION: Hello, Mr. Secretary. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity of address you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
QUESTION: I'd like to ask you, what is your personal opinion - not the United States, but yours, Mr. Blinken - about President Lula's statement comparing the situation in Gaza with the Holocaust? And in addition, if you believe that this kind of statement could spoil or frustrate the Brazilians' government plans of - presented at this - today's G20, especially the big changes proposed in the UN Security Council with the inclusion of another country such as Brazil? Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you very much. First, let me repeat something I said a few minutes ago. The quality of the conversation, the exchange, with President Lula - I, on behalf of the United States, could not have been more pleased with. And I'm grateful to him for all of the time he dedicated to our meeting, but also, again, the substance of it. And as I said, we were focused almost entirely on the very important and powerful common agenda that the United States and Brazil share when it comes to the big challenges of our moment, and doing so in ways that improves the lives of people in Brazil, the United States, and around the world.
That was almost the entirety of our conversation, and it's reflective of the fact that in so many ways the vision that President Lula brings is the same vision that President Biden has. And as a representative of President Biden, my purpose was really to continue to deepen that common approach and continue to look at practical ways we can advance it.
Now, we also have differences on some issues and the way we approach them. And on this particular question, obviously the comparison of Gaza to the Holocaust we profoundly disagree. But that's also something that friends do. We can have these disagreements, even profound disagreements, on one particular issue or I should say even an aspect of the issue and still continue all of the vital work that we're doing together.
And also, we're joined in having the shared objectives in this moment of getting hostages out, getting an extended humanitarian ceasefire in, along with more humanitarian assistance, and ending the conflict. That's a shared objective. So I think it's important to know that was the nature of our conversation, of our exchange. And we're committed - we remain committed - to advancing our common agenda, both between the United States and Brazil directly as well as through Brazil's leadership of the G20.
MR PATEL: We'll go to Simon Lewis with Reuters.
QUESTION: Thank you. Secretary Blinken, I wanted to ask a little bit more on the Gaza question. Coming to the G20 meetings last year, you were able to kind of garner widespread support from members of the G20 with your position on Russia, even citing UN Charter principles that were being breached by the invasion of Ukraine. This year, we got most of the members of the G20 - or many members of the G20 are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in contradiction with your own position, highlighted by the fact that the U.S. was forced to use a veto at the UN on that issue.
So comparing the last year to this year, is your support for Israel and its war leaving you isolated? Has it put you on the backfoot?
And in a related couple of points, there are continuing warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Deconfliction issues and looting are meaning trucks getting aid in make it into Gaza, but they don't actually reach those in need. WFP has said its suspending crucial food deliveries to the north of Gaza, and the UN assessment mission that you've spoken about hasn't gone ahead. What are you doing to address this dire situation? And can you say whether Israel is really doing all it can to cooperate with those efforts? Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thanks, Simon. So first, with regard to the UN Security Council resolution, it's important to start with the - with this clear fact and proposition. That resolution would not, in and of itself, resulted in a ceasefire. The question before us is what is the most effective way to move forward - move forward in a way that gets hostages out, gets an extended humanitarian ceasefire, and ultimately leads to the end of the conflict. And in our judgment, the best way to do that is to exactly what we're doing right now, which is to work intensely on an agreement on the hostages.
This is something I'm involved in virtually very single day, including here, alongside my colleagues, the CIA director Bill Burns, the White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk. We're in constant communication and working every aspect of this, because that is the quickest path, the most effective path to get to where everyone wants to go, including everyone at the G20.
And as I said, the Security Council resolution, in and of itself, would not produce that. And indeed, the concern that we had with this particular resolution was twofold. One was the fact that it was actually silent as to hostages; second, the timing of it was such that at the very moment when, again, the best path forward is to see if we can reach an agreement on the hostages, anything that might in any way undermine that, confuse that, disrupt that effort, is simply counterproductive to what everyone wants to achieve.
Now, in terms of what people want to achieve, actually we all share the same goals. Everyone wants to see an end to this conflict as soon as possible. Everyone wants to see an end to the suffering of children, women, and men in Gaza, who - so many innocents who've suffered and continue to suffer so terribly, who are caught in this crossfire of Hamas's making. We all want to see that end as quickly as possible. And I think all of us are united in wanting to see after Gaza the path forward to a genuinely durable, sustainable peace, to make sure that this never happens again for Israelis and never happens again for Palestinians. So we're united in that.
And again, in terms of some of the particulars, everyone supports trying to reach a hostage agreement. Everyone supports having an extended humanitarian ceasefire to allow that agreement to go forward, as well as to dramatically increase humanitarian assistance. Everyone supports finding a way to end the conflict and move to this path to a durable solution.
So I found a lot of commonality on that. Now, again, there may be differences over tactics, and there may be differences over the Security Council resolution. But if we're trying to focus on actually getting results, actually making a change, making a difference, we think what we're focused on is the best way to do that.
In terms of assistance getting in, what I can tell you is this: There are two things that are a challenge. One is actually getting the assistance in to Gaza, and here this is something we've been working on pretty much every single day over the last four months. And over time, we were able, first of all, to open the gates to start to allow assistance in. That was a product of our intense engagement and diplomacy. Then to expand the places through which assistance was getting through, as well as to expand the assistance itself - all of this has taken a lot of sustained work.
But it's also accurate that every step along the way, we've encountered obstacles; we continue to encounter them, and we're dealing with them virtually every day. Then once assistance is inside of Gaza, that's not enough, because it actually has to get to the people who need it. And there too, there have been many obstacles that we're trying to work through every single day, including making sure that convoys can proceed in a way that ensures the safety of those who are conducting them. And that means deconfliction, it means coordination, and that has been insufficient. So we're working to improve that, as well as to make sure that - as you pointed out - assistance gets not only to people throughout the southern part of Gaza but actually gets to the many people who need it who remain in the north, some 350,000 people who remain above the Wadi Gaza.
So what I can tell you is this: We are working this quite literally every single day, through our own envoy for assistance, Ambassador David Satterfield and his team; through the work that I and many others in the government are doing, engaging with the different institutions of the United Nations, engaging with the Israeli Government, with the Egyptians, with the Jordanians.
The bottom line is this, though: We need more aid to get in, through more places, to reach more people. That's the bottom line, and we want to make sure that we deliver on that.
QUESTION: The (inaudible)?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Every single day we - we're engaged. When an issue arises, we tackle it and we look to see that there's an adequate response. So you can take this issue - issue by issue, obstacle by obstacle. But what we have seen is when we've brought up a problem that's arisen, generally speaking, yes, the Israelis have engaged it. But we continue to be in a situation where, again, not enough is getting in in the first place, and once it's in, it's not effectively getting to everyone who needs it. That has to be addressed.
MR PATEL: Final question - Camila Zarur, Folha de São Paulo.
QUESTION: Hi, Mr. Secretary. Before the G20 chancellors reunion, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov criticized the politicization of G20 for addressing issues such as the war in Ukraine. How do you see this statement? And have you had any conversation with Mr. Lavrov during the G20 meeting or in the dinner last night?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. The second part of the question first. I didn't have any direct conversations with Foreign Minister Lavrov, but we certainly - well, I heard him speak in the meetings and I imagine he heard me speak, and many others as well.
Second, in terms of the so-called politicization of the G20, I think Foreign Minister Vieira and a number of other colleagues addressed this very effectively themselves. If we're not able to deal with issues of peace and security, then it's going to be if not impossible at least that much harder to actually deal with what we're trying to accomplish through the G20. If you have conflict, if you have insecurity, then actually making progress on food security, on the energy transition, on dealing with climate change, on working to defend and uphold worker rights, that's either impossible or much more difficult.
So it's very much within the province of the G20 to be talking about these issues and hopefully to find common ways forward. I think that's what the people that we represent expect of us. It's actually what pretty much people around the world expect of us, because the G20, even though it represents the world's 20 largest economies, is in many ways also representative of the entire global majority, even countries that are not at the G20 table, although we had a lot of invited countries to the session and I applaud Brazil for doing that.
So no, I think it's clear that this is not the politicization of the G20. On the contrary, we have a responsibility to try to come together, find a way forward on geopolitical issues that may be divisive, because if we don't do that the entire rest of the agenda is going to be very, very difficult to achieve.
MR PATEL: Thanks, everybody.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
MR PATEL: Thank you.
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