India Backs Russia’s G20 Participation, Rejects West’s Call for Boycott
Cut out photos of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left and Mahatma Gandhi, right, are erected next to veiled G20 logo before its unveiling ceremony in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.
As India assumed the G20 presidency on Monday, Prime Minister Modi said that “depoliticizing” fertilizer and food supply chains are the priority for New Delhi.Delhi expects full “participation” from Russia in all G20 meetings under its presidency, rejecting calls from the West to boycott Moscow in the intergovernmental grouping over the special military operation in Ukraine.Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi remarked during a weekly briefing on Thursday that it would be Delhi’s “endeavor” to ensure that the G20 is able to respond in “one voice” to pressing challenges confronting the world, particularly the low and middle-income countries of the Global South.
It is an important grouping. It works on the important principle of consensus. As the G20 chair, our effort would be to build consensus and we have tried to do that in the final stages of the Bali Summit,” Bagchi stated.
Bagchi singled out the high prices of food, fertilizers and fuel as the most important issues facing developing countries at the moment.
IndiaIndian G20 Presidency to ‘Depoliticize’ Global Food & Fertilizer Supplies: Modi08:31 GMTThe Indian official also underscored reforming the West-led system which has been in place since the end of World War II and giving increasing weighting to developing nations as part of the G20 agenda under Delhi’s presidency.Geopolitical tensions between the US, European Union (EU) and other western allies and Russia over the Ukraine crisis spilled over in the G20 meetings this year. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her counterparts from UK, Canada and EU walked out of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Washington in July as soon as the Russian officials began addressing the meeting virtually in one example.The G20 under the Indonesia presidency which ended last month agreed on just one joint statement, which was released after the Leaders’ Summit in Bali last month.The G20 communique acknowledged “different assessments” of the situation in Ukraine and the western sanctions against Moscow, which have led to spiraling food, fuel and fertilizer prices globally and affected the debt burden of low and middle-income nations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who represented Moscow at the Leaders’ Summit, noted that western powers are trying to politicize the G20 declaration.
India, China and Indonesia, as well as several other major middle-income nations, have refused to back the western position against Moscow. On the contrary, Delhi and Beijing have enhanced their energy and commercial ties with Russia in view of high commodity prices.