New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday skipped the virtual BRICS-Plus joint meeting on the Middle East situation in Gaza. India was instead represented at the meeting by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
Modi was the only among BRICS leaders who skipped the meeting which was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping of China, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
United Nations General-Secretary António Guterres and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates were also in attendance.
Ramaphosa urged for an ‘immediate ceasefire’ and called Israel’s “collective punishment of Palestinian civilians” a war crime. Xi too called for an “immediate end to hostilities” in the Gaza Strip and urged for an end to “the collective punishment of Palestinians”.
Besides India, Argentina was also represented at the virtual meet by its foreign minister.
Sources in the central government maintained that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not join the virtual meeting since he was on the campaign trail.
“Where terrorism is concerned, none of us should or can compromise with it. Hostage-taking is equally unacceptable and cannot be condoned,” Jaishankar said in his address at the virtual meeting.
Representing PM @narendramodi at the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS. https://t.co/JV6CReUhug
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) November 21, 2023
His remarks come in the backdrop of India preparing to host the virtual G20 Leaders’ Summit Wednesday.
India is the only BRICS member state to have abstained from a UNGA resolution passed in October which called for a ‘humanitarian truce’ in Gaza. The resolution was introduced by Jordan and found support from 120 members, while 14 voted against it and 45 abstained.
Israeli strikes have devastated the Gaza Strip over the past month with the Hamas-controlled health ministry estimating a death toll of 14,000 Palestinians. The strikes were in retaliation to Hamas’s aerial and ground attack on the Israeli mainland on 7 October, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,200 Israelis with another 200 taken hostage.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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