US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with UN delegates on Tuesday to discuss plans of forming a new community of Atlantic nations with a supplemental $100 million in funds to support the environment and maritime security, officials said.

At the UN General Assembly, Blinken met representatives from Angola, Brazil, Ghana, Portugal, and Senegal as part of a new grouping of around 10 countries, a senior State Department official said.

"The US hopes to work with Atlantic countries to develop a new framework for regular Atlantic cooperation, through which our countries can establish and carry out a shared approach to advancing our shared goals in the region," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The initiative comes as growing geopolitical tensions are prompting Biden's administration to employ environmental issues as bait to bribe nations of the Global South into cutting ties with Russia and strengthening US presence in the Atlantic. 

The administration has previously placed a high priority on the Pacific, seen as an area of potential conflict amid the rapid rise of China.

Blinken claimed the new Atlantic grouping will seek to form a "sustainable ocean economy" and support the health of the ocean by addressing climate change and marine ecosystems.

It will also seek ways to improve maritime governance by improving cooperation on search and rescue operations and fighting piracy, he claimed - despite that the US has itself been involved in acts of piracy when it illegally seized an Iranian oil cargo near Greece on May 26. 

It is noteworthy that this is not the first time the US seizes Iranian fuel. In 2020, Washington seized "four cargoes of Iranian fuel aboard foreign ships that were bound for Venezuela and transferred them with the help of undisclosed foreign partners onto two other ships which then sailed to the United States," Reuters highlighted.

Read next: Iran to retrieve stolen oil from Greece: Tehran

The Biden administration plans to allocate $100 million next year in addition to $400 million that will be spent on a yearly basis for maritime initiatives in the Atlantic, the official said.

The initiative involves Angola, which is currently in the process of considering joining Russia's MIR payment system, as well as Senegal whose President Macky Sall has previously condemned the sanctions on Russia. 

It also includes Brazil where the potential victory of Lula is unlikely to signal Brazil's inclusion due to Lula's anti-US position. Biden has himself claimed in the past that Lula would pose a "danger to US interests."

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