NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Foreign ministers from around the world are gathering in New Delhi this week as Russia’s war in Ukraine and tensions between the United States and China escalate, host India hoping issues such as climate change and Third World debt will help. not overlooked.
The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on March 1-2 will take place days after the bloc’s finance chiefs met in Bengaluru, where they argued over Russia’s condemnation of the war, failed to reach consensus on a joint statement and settled instead. Brief document.
The outcome was similar to the G20 summit meeting in Bali last November, when host Indonesia also issued a final declaration acknowledging the differences.
Last July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov walked out of the G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting, which also took place in Bali, after the West strongly condemned the war.
The New Delhi meeting will be attended by Lavrov, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and British James Cleverly, while China is expected to send its Foreign Minister Chen Gang. In all, representatives of 40 countries, including non-G20 members invited by India, and multilateral organizations will attend.
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The G20 bloc includes the wealthy G7 nations, as well as Russia, China, India, Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, among others.
A meeting of foreign ministers of the Quartet countries – the United States, India, Australia and Japan – is also scheduled to be held on the sidelines.
An Indian foreign ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity that he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wanted to direct the focus of this week’s meeting to issues such as climate change and the debt of developing countries.
The official said India did not want Ukraine to dominate the event, but it would be high on the agenda. The official added that New Delhi “intends to continue playing the voice of the global south and raising issues relevant to the region”.
Ramin Toloy, assistant secretary of state for economic and trade affairs, said Blinken will highlight US efforts to address food and energy security issues affecting developing countries.
Toloy told reporters before Blinken traveled to the meeting that the senior US diplomat would “emphasize the damage caused by Russia’s war of aggression” and would encourage other countries to redouble calls for Russia to end the war.
The meeting of foreign ministers will also be monitored for how tensions between Washington and Beijing play out, including over the Ukraine war.
China, along with Russia, refused to sign the summary statement of the chiefs of finance in Bengaluru.
Earlier on Monday, China accused the United States of “endangering peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait after a US military P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft flew through the sensitive waterway.
balloon tension
Relations between the world’s two largest economies soured this month after the US military shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon that had flown over the United States. China says the balloon was a civilian research vessel that was accidentally blown off course, calling the US response an overreaction.
The row prompted Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing.
Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, called the US’s handling of the balloon incident “unimaginable” and “hysterical”.
New Delhi has sought to take a strict neutral line on the Russia-Ukraine war.
While Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that this was not a time for war, India refused to blame Moscow for the conflict, sought a diplomatic solution and aggressively boosted its purchases of Russian oil.
Differences over the conflict will resurface at this week’s meeting, said Anil Wadhwa, a former Indian diplomat and senior fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi.
“It is unlikely that the G20 foreign ministers will agree on a common language that proposes ways and mechanisms to deal with the situation in Ukraine,” he said.
“The reasons are many, but the main one is that the situation in Ukraine has become very volatile.”
Additional reporting by Shivangi Acharya and Sarita Chaganti Singh in Bengaluru, Krishn Kaushik and Rupam Jain in Delhi, and Simon Lewis in Astana, Kazakhstan; Written by Y.P. Rajesh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Bill Barakrut
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