As the G20 foreign ministers met under the shadow of fractured East-West relations over the Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for building consensus on pressing global challenges and not allowing differences on geopolitical tensions to affect overall cooperation in the grouping.
In his video message at the meeting as per report in PTI , Modi also invoked Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha to urge the delegates to draw inspiration from India’s civilisational ethos and “focus not on what divides us, but on what unites us.” The foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialised and developing nations held crucial deliberations on key global challenges that took place in the backdrop of the increasingly bitter rift between the US-led West and the Russia-China combine over the Ukraine conflict.
In their remarks, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly and European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell criticised Russia for its invasion of Ukraine while China’s Qin Gang referred to the 12-point Chinese peace plan to resolve the conflict.
In his address, Prime Minister Modi said the world looks upon the G20 to ease the challenges of growth, development, economic resilience, disaster resilience, financial stability, trans-national crime, corruption; terrorism, and food and energy security
“In all these areas, the G20 has capacity to build consensus and deliver concrete results. We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can,” Modi said without making any reference to the Ukraine conflict or any other contentious issues.
“As you meet in the land of Gandhi and the Buddha, I pray that you will draw inspiration from India’s civilsational ethos – to focus not on what divides us, but on what unites us,” Modi said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, China’s Qin Gang, the UK’s James Cleverly and European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell Fontelles are among those attending the meeting chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
