The G20 foreign ministers on Thursday failed to agree on a joint communique due to differences on the text to describe the Ukraine war despite a strong push by host India to bridge the divisions that have affected the grouping of the world’s biggest economies.
In a video message at the start of deliberations by the foreign ministers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made no direct reference to the war in Ukraine but acknowledged that the meeting was being held at a “time of deep global divisions”. He urged the ministers to focus on “on what unites us” and to come together for the sake of developing countries not represented at the meet.
After two sessions that were dominated by the Ukraine crisis and that saw Western leaders denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its fallout on the global economy, the meeting ended without consensus on a joint declaration.
The meeting was summed up in a chair’s summary issued by India, which noted that two paras condemning the war and calling for upholding international law and peaceful resolution of conflicts “were agreed to by all member countries except Russia and China”.
Addressing a media briefing after the meeting, external affairs minister S Jaishankar sought to highlight how the G20 foreign ministers were able to reach consensus on crucial issues such as the need to strengthen multilateralism, mobilising additional financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reliable food and fertiliser supply chains, and counterterrorism. He also pointed out that the G20 foreign ministers had for the first time discussed counter-narcotics and sought strong international cooperation to tackle this issue.
{{/usCountry}}Addressing a media briefing after the meeting, external affairs minister S Jaishankar sought to highlight how the G20 foreign ministers were able to reach consensus on crucial issues such as the need to strengthen multilateralism, mobilising additional financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reliable food and fertiliser supply chains, and counterterrorism. He also pointed out that the G20 foreign ministers had for the first time discussed counter-narcotics and sought strong international cooperation to tackle this issue.
{{/usCountry}}“Despite the challenges of the divergent positions on the conflict in Ukraine, the G20 foreign ministers were able to come to a consensus on addressing these key challenges that I have just mentioned. As the Prime Minister urged, we did indeed focus more on what unites us than what divides us,” Jaishankar said.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken was more blunt while talking about the reasons why there was no consensus at the meeting on a joint declaration.
“In the particular case of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, you have virtually everyone in the G20 signing on to what had already been stated [at the last G20 Summit] in Bali and the two holdouts, of course, were Russia and China,” he told a separate media briefing.
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Without naming China and Russia, Blinken also said in the context of the need for multilateral reforms that there were “two countries in particular” at the UN Security Council that “tend to block the attempted actions of the council to address some of the most urgent global concerns”.
Lavrov told the G20 foreign ministers that Western representatives derailed the meeting while trying to scapegoat Russia for their own failings, disrespecting efforts by host India to reach agreement on other issues.
“I want to apologise to the Indian presidency and to our colleagues from countries of the Global South for the obscene behaviour of some Western delegations, which have turned the G20’s agenda into a farce,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.
People aware of the matter said a key reason for why there was no consensus was Russia’s decision, led by Lavrov, to back away from certain positions it agreed to in the Bali declaration, when the G20 foreign ministers, among other things, had held that “today’s era must not be of war”.
Lavrov, people aware of discussions said, appeared to be firm on the red lines drawn by Moscow on what concessions to offer at the G20 meeting, despite being in India, one of its strongest allies. The Russian foreign minister is believed to have communicated that the references to the war in Ukraine should not be part of the joint declaration.
The final “chair’s summary and outcome document”, however, reflected some of text of the Bali declaration with the caveat that Russia and China did not agree to portions in paragraphs three and four.
The meeting of G20 finance ministers in Bengaluru last week had also failed to agree on a joint communique after Russia and China objected to the inclusion of text from the leaders’ declaration at the last G20 Summit on the war in Ukraine.
As with the chair’s summary issued in Bengaluru, the outcome document of Thursday stated: “Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks.”
It also noted that there were “other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions”. The document added: “Recognising that the G20 is not the forum to resolve security issues, we acknowledge that security issues can have significant consequences for the global economy.”
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India has so far not publicly criticised Russia’s actions, though Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting last September that “today’s era is not of war”.
Like Jaishankar, Blinken too said that there was “broad consensus across the G20” to work and act together on issues of global concern. “Prime Minister Modi said today that we should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those that we can and I think what we saw today is a very good reflection of what the Prime Minister said – that is work and agreement on a whole series of lines of effort that the G20 will take to address the issues of greatest concern to people around the world,” he said.
People familiar with the matter said discussions on a joint communique – both at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting and at talks involving the sous sherpas of the member countries – ran into problems on several issues, including Russia’s call for an investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline last year.
Blinken also spoke about concerns that China is considering supplying arms to Russia. “Were China to engage in material lethal support for Russia’s aggression or were it to engage in the systematic evasion of sanctions to help Russia, that would be a serious problem for our countries,” he said.
Blinken said he had raised this “very real concern” with senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi at the recent Munich Security Conference. “And I made clear there would be consequences for engaging in those actions,” he added.