New Delhi: There is growing pessimism about a unanimous leaders declaration being adopted by the G20 at its summit in New Delhi this weekend, after the G20 Sherpas, who met at Nuh in Haryana from Monday to Wednesday, failed to reach a consensus. The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and other Western nations refused to accept the changes India proposed to the paragraph on the war in Ukraine in order to make it acceptable to Russia and China, reports Deccan Herald.
The Wire has reported quoting a senior EU official who said that the text drafted by India on the Ukraine war did “not go far enough” to be accepted by G7 and EU members.
External affairs minister S. Jaishankar met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Jakarta on Wednesday on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit to discuss the impasse about the declaration to be adopted by the G20 leaders in New Delhi. The meeting was reportedly held to seek Lavrov’s intervention to end the impasse, which would give India the ignominious distinction of becoming the first country, under whose presidency a leaders’ declaration could not be issued. In the year-long Indian presidency, there have been no joint communique from any ministerial or official meetings of the grouping that were held in India.
A unanimous declaration is seen as the minimum bar for any summit to be not declared a failure. With Chinese President Xi Jinping choosing not to attend the summit, the event has already been robbed of much of its sheen. A failure to issue a declaration would reflect poorly on India globally, and especially on PM Narendra Modi, who has tried to showcase the routine rotational presidency of G20 as a huge diplomatic achievement.
Briefing journalists ahead of US President Joe Biden’s visit to New Delhi to attend the summit, Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, told journalists in Washington DC that “to get absolute consensus on a statement on Ukraine is challenging because you’ve got Russia seated at the table, albeit not at the leader level because Putin isn’t going to be there.” G20 works on the principle of consensus and any member country has the right to exercise its veto over the final document.
The sharp divisions on the Ukraine conflict between G7 countries on one side and Russia and China on the other have made it impossible to reach a consensus.While the western countries have been insisting on the inclusion of text explicitly condemning Russiaʼs military aggression against Ukraine in any ‘Delhi Declarationʼ, Beijing and Moscow have been opposing it. They argue that the G20 is a forum meant to promote international economic cooperation, and not to discuss geopolitical issues.
After India took over the presidency, Beijing and Moscow have stridently opposed the Bali Declarationʼs two paragraphs on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The G20 Sherpas made a last-ditch attempt during a meeting in Nuh but failed to break the deadlock and rescue the summit.