Global medical supply chains on G7 ministerial in UK on Monday

The main agenda will be to establish global medical supply chains to fight the coronavirus pandemic, which has returned in waves all over the world.

Published on: Apr 30, 2021, 14:41:03 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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External affairs minister S Jaishankar will reach London on Monday to attend the two-day G7 plus 3 ministerial meeting amidst the resurgent coronavirus pandemic in India with the focus on global supply chains to fight the disease, chart the path for economic recovery and strive towards carbon neutrality to battle climate change. S Jaishankar will be in Britain on May 3 and 4 with the meeting laying the groundwork for the G7 plus 3 summit on June 11-13 at Cornwall. The three countries apart from G7 are India, Australia and South Korea.

The richest democratic nations of the world will also coordinate their policies to chart a course for economic recovery post-pandemic and relook at cooperative mechanisms to restart trade and economic revival. (AFP Photo)

While it is still not clear whether the QUAD ministers will meet on the sidelines of the G7 ministerial, India, Australia and France foreign ministers meeting is on the cards, just as Japan, the US and South Korean foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in England.

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According to diplomats based in the European Union (EU), London and Delhi, the main agenda item will be to establish global medical supply chains to fight the pandemic, which has returned in waves all over the world. India has been seeking delicensing of the vaccines against Covid-19 so that the preventive drug is available at low cost and in significant quantities all over the world.

Although a G7 plus 3 communique is expected after the Cornwall Summit, the richest democratic nations of the world will also coordinate their policies to chart a course for economic recovery post-pandemic and relook at cooperative mechanisms to restart trade and economic revival.

For India, the G7 ministerial will be just before the India-EU virtual summit, hosted by Portugal, on May 8 with the expectation of revival of negotiations towards free trade and investment agreement.

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The third important item on the agenda will be the issue of climate change with countries being asked to move towards their carbon neutrality. While India has taken significant steps towards climate change, a forward movement is expected after the Cornwall Summit as the United Kingdom is hosting the UN Conference of Parties 26 at Glasgow on November 1 this year.

While Jaishankar will thank G7 members and EU states like France for helping out India fight the coronavirus disease by sending in crucial medical supplies at the time of the raging pandemic, the participating foreign ministers of 10 states are expected to work out an arrangement to help each other out in case the virus returns after vaccination of major parts of the globe by end 2021.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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