Delegates arrive at the venue in Bengaluru, where a meeting under India’s G20 presidency has begun on February 22, 2023.
Manjunath Kiran | AFP | Getty Images
The financial leaders of the world’s largest economies on Saturday harshly condemned Moscow for its war against Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself refusing to sign a joint statement.
India, which hosted a meeting in the city of Bengaluru as leader of the Group of Twenty (G20) economies, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war, but Western nations insisted they could not support an outcome that did not include condemnation.
The lack of full consensus among G20 members led India to resort to publishing a “summary of the presidency,” in which it simply summarized the two-day talks and noted the disagreements.
“Most members have strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, emphasizing that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in the global economy,” she said, citing the disruption to supply chains, risks to financial stability and the ongoing energy and energy crisis food insecurity.
“There were different views and different assessments of the situation and the sanctions,” it said, referring to actions by the United States, European countries and others to punish Russia for the invasion and deprive it of revenue.
The outcome was similar to that of a G20 summit in Bali last November, when host Indonesia also issued a final statement acknowledging differences. Established over two decades to deal with economic crises, the G20 is struggling to build consensus among members.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen previously told Reuters it was “absolutely necessary” for any statement to condemn Russia. Two delegates told Reuters that Russia and China did not want the G20 platform to be used to discuss political matters.
Russia, a member of the G20 but not the G7, describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation” and avoids calling it an invasion or a war.
India has maintained a broadly neutral stance, not blaming Russia for the invasion, has sought a diplomatic solution and has sharply increased its purchases of Russian oil.
China and India were among nations to abstain on Thursday when the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to demand Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine and end fighting.
In addition to the G7 countries, the G20 bloc also includes countries such as Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
On the sidelines, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held a meeting with the World Bank, China, India, Saudi Arabia and the G7 on Saturday on restructuring debt for troubled economies, but there were disagreements among members there too, the executive director said of the IMF Kristalina Georgieva.
“We have just finished a session where it became clear that there is an obligation to bridge differences for the good of countries,” Georgieva, who co-chaired the roundtable with India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, told reporters.
A delegate told Reuters that some initial progress had been made, mainly on language surrounding the issue, but the reorganization was not discussed in detail.
Yellen said there were no “results” from the meeting, which was mainly organizational in nature.
Further talks are planned around the spring meeting of the IMF and World Bank in April.
Pressure has been building on China, the world’s largest bilateral creditor, and other nations to take a big haircut on loans extended to struggling developing countries.
In a video address before the G20 meeting on Friday, Chinese Finance Minister Liu Kun reiterated Beijing’s position that the World Bank and other multilateral development banks should also participate in debt relief through debt cuts.
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