A meeting of senior diplomats from the Group of 20 industrial and developing countries ended in New Delhi on Thursday without a consensus on the Ukraine war, India’s foreign minister said, as members grappled with deepening divisions in their ranks and held contentious talks dominated by Russia’s war and China’s moves to increase its global influence.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there were “divergences” on the issue of the war in Ukraine “which we could not reconcile because various parties had different points of view.”
“If we had a perfect meeting of minds on all the issues, it would have been a collective statement,” Jaishankar said. He added that the members agreed on most issues related to the concerns of less developed nations, “such as strengthening multilateralism, promoting food and energy security, climate change, gender issues and the fight against terrorism”.
Host India had called on all members of the fractured Group of 20 to reach consensus on issues of deep concern to the poorest countries, even if the broader East-West divide over Ukraine could not be resolved. And while others, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, chose to highlight its positive role in addressing global crises, the division was palpable.
Last week, India was forced to issue a compromised president’s summary at the end of the G20 finance ministers meeting after Russia and China objected to a joint communique that retained language on the war in Ukraine extracted straight out of last year’s G-20 leaders’ summit. statement in Indonesia.
In a video to foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged members not to let current tensions destroy potential deals on food and energy security, climate change and debt. .
“We are meeting at a time of deep global divisions,” Modi told the group, which included Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, whose discussions would naturally be “affected by the geopolitical tensions of the day”.
“We all have our positions and our perspectives on how these tensions should be resolved,” he said, adding that: “We must not let the problems we cannot solve together get in the way of the ones we can.”
In a nod to fears that the increasingly bitter rift between the United States and its allies on the one hand and Russia and China on the other seems likely to widen further, Modi said “multilateralism is in crisis today.”
He regretted that the two main objectives of the international order after the Second World War, preventing conflicts and promoting cooperation, were difficult to achieve. “The experience of the last two years, financial crisis, pandemic, terrorism and wars, clearly shows that global governance has failed in its two terms,” he said.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar addressed the group in person, telling them they “must find common ground and provide guidance.”
Blinken, according to statements released by the State Department, spent much of his time describing US efforts to bolster energy and food security. But he also told ministers that Russia’s war with Ukraine could not go unnoticed.
“Unfortunately, this meeting has again been marred by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine, its deliberate campaign of destruction against civilian targets and its attack on the fundamental principles of the UN Charter,” he said.
“We must continue to call on Russia to end its aggressive war and withdraw from Ukraine for the sake of international peace and economic stability,” Blinken said. He noted that 141 countries had voted to condemn Russia at the United Nations on the first anniversary of the invasion.
However, several members of the G-20, including India, China and South Africa, chose to abstain from that vote.
Blinken and Lavrov met briefly on Thursday in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries. US officials said Blinken and Lavrov talked for about 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference.
In addition to attending the G20 and seeing Modi and Jaishankar individually on Thursday, Blinken met separately with the foreign ministers of Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa, and was also scheduled to hold talks with the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Mexico. .
As in most international events since last year, the division over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security dwarfed the proceedings. But as the conflict has dragged on for the past 12 months, the division has grown and now threatens to become the main irritant to US-China ties, already in turmoil for other reasons.
A Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine that has been praised by Russia but rejected by the West has done nothing to improve matters, as US officials have repeatedly accused China in recent days of considering supplying Russia with weapons for its use in war.
Blinken said Wednesday that the Chinese plan rang false given its focus on “sovereignty” compared to its own recent actions.
“China can’t have it both ways,” Blinken told reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, before traveling to New Delhi. “You cannot present yourself as a force for peace in public, while, one way or another, you continue to fuel the flames of this fire that Vladimir Putin started.”
He also said there is “no evidence” that Putin is really ready for diplomacy to end the war. “On the contrary, the evidence is in the other direction,” he said.
China responded to those comments on Thursday, accusing the United States of promoting war by supplying arms to Ukraine and violating Chinese sovereignty by supporting Taiwan.
“The United States says it wants peace, but it is waging wars around the world and inciting confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.
“While emphasizing the need to respect and maintain international order, the United States has vigorously applied unlawful unilateral sanctions, putting domestic law above international law,” he said. “What the United States should do is reflect on itself, stop misleading the public and making irresponsible comments, take its responsibilities seriously, and do something to promote de-escalation and peace talks.”
Meanwhile, Moscow has been relentless in its view that the West, led by the United States, is trying to destroy Russia.
Before the meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized US policies, saying that Lavrov and his delegation would use the G-20 to “focus on the West’s attempts to take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from their hands.” . ”
