New Delhi: With a week to go for the start of the G-20 summit, there are still question marks on the line-up of leaders who will be attending the two-day meeting. Meanwhile, the Union government is hoping to dampen any questions on the success of the summit based on attendance by pointing to previous summits.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absence was publicly announced, there has been no official confirmation or denial about reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be in Delhi for the G-20 summit.
The Chinese president’s absence would be especially relevant for other attendees too, as UK prime minister had earlier indicated he would like to meet Xi, while there were signs of a meeting with US president Joe Biden.
The Indian government has, so far, not publicly reacted to the reports.
But on Saturday, official sources issued a long background brief to point out that skipping G-20 summits is not an uncommon trait.
“There are some media reports that some heads of state may skip the G20 Summit in India. As is evident, the level of attendance at global summits varies from year to year. In today’s world with so many demands on the leaders’ time, it is not always possible for every leader to attend every summit. From time to time, many leaders skip summits for their own reason,” said the brief.
It noted that the highest number of leaders skipping a summit was in G-20 summit was in 2021 despite there being “no major geopolitical or health reason to skip it”. It was the first in-person G-20 summit in two years.
A Reuters report from 2021 noted that Kremlin cited the continued COVID-19 pandemic for Putin’s decision with Russia registering record deaths and new cases at that time. It pointed out that Mexican President would be a no-show as he had not made long foreign trips since 2018.
Japan’s new prime minister Fumio Kishida did not take part as the general elections was being held on the last day of the summit.
Similarly, South African Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he would skip the 2021 summit due to local government elections.
The state agency SPA said that 87-year-old Saudi King Salman virtually led the Saudi delegation at the 2021 summit, while the Saudi foreign minister physically represented the Gulf kingdom at Rome.
China’s Xi had also skipped the Italian summit, the only G-20 meeting that he had not attended so far. The Reuters report had cited an Italian diplomat as saying “COVID-19 also appeared to be the main concern for Xi, with China imposing strict and lengthy quarantine on anyone arriving in the country from abroad”.
He didn’t travel outside of China for a long period of over two years. After his state visit to Myanmar in January 2020, Xi’s next visit to a foreign destination was in October 2022, for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. He even skipped the official dinner and the group photograph at the SCO summit in Samarkand, with Reuters reporting that this was also due to COVID-19 concerns.
The background brief also went into more details on the number of times there were absences at the 16 physical summits held so far. After 2021 Rome summit, the largest number of absentees among leaders was three at last year’s summit in Bali. Besides Russia and Mexico, Brazil was represented at the foreign minister-level as it was in the transition period after its general elections.
The background brief also listed the country-wise details of who had attended summits at which level over the years. Saudi Arabia has not attended nine out of the 16 summit at the leadership level.
“These things do not reflect anything about the host country,” said the background brief.