Very few observers expected the G20 Foreign Ministers meet in the national capital to have a dramatic outcome. True to script, the members failed to converge at a meeting point and reconcile their ‘divergences" on the Ukraine war.
"There were issues concerned with the Ukraine conflict. There were divergences and there were differences," said Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, trying to explain why an outcome document had emanated out of the meeting instead of a joint statement.
Predictably, both Russia and China objected to the word ‘Ukraine war’, thwarting a joint statement for the second time.
Last week, a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers in Bengaluru failed to agree on a common statement after Russia and China similarly sought to water down language on the Ukraine war. A "Chair's Summary" was published at the end of the discussions.
The major take-away from the meeting was an agreement on "the bulk of issues" involving concerns of the global south.
JAB THEY MET, FOR 10 MINUTES
The high spot of the meeting was a less-than-ten minutes meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the G20 talks. This was their first high-level one-on-one contact since the war. Blinken had said on Wednesday that he had no plans to meet his Russian or Chinese counterparts. However, the meeting did not throw up any surprises and Blinken used it to "emphatically underscore that US support for Ukraine was not wavering." Blinken wanted to "send that message directly" and also urged Russia to engage with Ukraine on the basis of demands put forward by President Volodymyr Zelensky. "We always remain hopeful that the Russians will reverse their decision and be prepared to engage in a diplomatic process that can lead to a just and durable peace," an official said. "But I wouldn't say that coming out of this encounter there was any expectation that things would change in the near term."
