OREANDA-NEWS. At a meeting in Iceland on May 20, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will discuss both bilateral relations and international issues, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This was stated in an interview with RBC by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

"As for bilateral relations, they have recently been developing in a downward trend, which must be stopped without fail,at least. Speaking about international issues, this is, of course, the situation around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in the Middle East as a whole, the progress of negotiations on the settlement of the Iranian nuclear program and the return of the parties to the full — scale implementation of the JCPOA," the deputy minister said.

The meeting between Lavrov and Blinken will take place in Reykjavik on the sidelines of the Arctic Council ministerial session. Earlier, the US State Department claimed that during the negotiations, Blinken could raise the topic of the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline with his Russian counterpart. The United States opposes the project and has imposed sanctions on companies involved in its construction. "We are not looking for escalation, we are just looking for a more predictable and stable relationship again. And I think there are areas where we can discuss these things with Foreign Minister Lavrov, " the State Department official added.