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G20 meeting: No joint communiqué as “divergences” over Ukraine Conflict derail the statement

India to host G20 Foreign Ministers meet under its presidency in New Delhi

Inception meetings were held on March 1st and 2nd, the largest gathering of foreign ministers at any G20, noting that it would be the second ministerial meeting of India’s presidency.

On Wednesday, the Foreign Secretary of India, Vinay Kwatra, told reporters: “We will carry the theme of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and mark the period of Amrit Kaal of India’s independence.”

Highlighting the Russian-Ukraine conflict is likely to overshadow the course of discussions, he said: “Given the nature and the developing situation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it will be an important point of discussion.”

“Questions relating to food, energy, and fertilizer security, and the impact that the conflict has on these economic challenges that we face,” would also receive “due focus,” he added. (Aljazeera)

After the inaugural dinner on Wednesday, the discussion held on Thursday was attended by 40 delegations, including the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and the Foreign Minister of China, Qin Gang.

Foreign Ministers meet

After the Group of 20 (G20) nations meeting on Thursday, Indian External Minister S. Jaishankar said that the G20 has reached a consensus on many key issues and has been adopted as a Chair’s Summary and Outcome document.

He added that no joint communiqué had been issued due to the diverging reservations over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“There were a large number of issues where there was agreement: multilateralism, food and energy security, climate change, gender issues, global health, and terrorism. There was a considerable meeting of minds. If we had a perfect meeting of minds, we could have had a collective statement, but divergences on Ukraine did come in the way of that,” said the External Affairs Minister of India. (The Hindu)

Like the G20 financial leaders meeting last week, in this meeting too, China and Russia had “diverging” responses with statements condemning the war.

Antony Blinken mirrored India’s position

Despite the contrasting positions of the western nations and Russia and China, on the other hand, on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both India and the US have mentioned that the majority approved the outcome document.

This marks a significant step forward as consensus over “95 percent” of the issues could be reached, but there was none for the two paragraphs. The External Minister of India said: “There were differences over the Ukraine Conflict which we could not reconcile.”

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, mirrored India’s position, saying, “What we have seen is the outcome document that reflected the shared agreements on many issues by all foreign ministers.”

 

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