Jaipur: The three-day G20 Trade and Investment Ministers’ Meeting in Jaipur, Rajasthan, concluded Friday without a joint communique.
Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal had said earlier in the week he was confident the meeting would end with a broad consensus on all trade-related issues, and a “concrete actionable outcome”.
All G20 ministerials this year, under India’s G20 presidency, have so far failed to create consensus on a joint statement due to differing views between the West on one side, and Russia and China on the other.
Expectations were slightly higher for a joint statement from the Jaipur meeting since G20 is essentially an economic grouping.
On Friday, the Indian side published a chair summary — issued by the G20 president after every ministerial — on the trade ministers’ meeting that, like previous chair summaries, included footnotes on Russia and China’s objections to portions of the text.
The objection this time was to paragraph 32, which refers to the war in Ukraine.
“The war in Ukraine has further adversely impacted the global economy. There was a discussion on the issue… Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy by constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity crisis, and elevating financial stability risks,” reads the paragraph.
The footnotes also described Russia and China’s reasons for opposing the paragraph — unlike the chair summaries for the finance and foreign ministers meetings, which simply stated that objections had been made.
Russia rejected the inclusion of paragraph 32 on the basis that it does not “conform to the G20 mandate”, according to the footnotes in the latest`chair summary. “Russia agrees with the rest of the text,” they add.
China rejected paragraph 32 on the grounds that the G20 trade ministers meeting is “not the right forum to discuss geopolitical issues”, and China did not support the inclusion of the geopolitics-related content.
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Russia, China accept para on UN
A paragraph (No. 33) on adhering to international law as outlined in the United Nations charter was again accepted by Russia and China in Jaipur, in what could be seen as a small win for Indian G20 negotiators.
Paragraph 33 says, “It is essential to uphold international law and the multilateral system that safeguards peace and stability. This includes defending all the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the UN…”
Moscow and Beijing had objected to both this and the Ukraine paragraphs in the chair summaries issued after the G20 finance and foreign ministers’ meetings, in February and March, respectively.
However, they restricted their objection to the paragraph explicitly mentioning Ukraine in the chair summaries issued after the G20 labour ministers’ meeting in July and the energy ministers’ meeting in Goa shortly afterwards.
The wording of the two paragraphs in all chair summaries has been identical, but the order different.
The chair summary issued after the G20 labour & employment ministers’ meeting in July had gone a step further by mentioning that Russia had expressed its views on sanctions (imposed on account of its war on Ukraine) as well.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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