The story
As the two-day meeting of G-20 Foreign Ministers begins in New Delhi on Wednesday, India is set to don the robes of global peacemaker by attempting to bridge the divide between western and non-western countries over the war in Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov among others will be hosted by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on the premises of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the National Capital Delhi.
The meeting will be shadowed by the global energy and food security triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Moscow has termed the invasion as a “special military operation”, the US has blamed the Kremlin for threatening “rules-based order”.
The script
Three sessions have been planned for the G-20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting. The first session will host discussions on “food and energy security” followed by another discussion on “strengthening multilateralism and need for reforms” and later “development cooperation”.
The second session will host bilateral meetings between Foreign Ministers during which Jaishankar is expected to meet with some of the guests which will be followed by lunch.
The third session will take up the issues of “counter-terrorism: new and emerging threats”, “global skill mapping and talent pool” and “humanitarian assistance and disaster relief”. The meeting will culminate with a statement which is where India’s diplomatic strategy will be put to a test.
Explain more, please
India confronts the challenge of bridging the divide that has appeared in the grouping of the world’s 20 leading economies over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting failed to evolve a consensus on a joint statement on the reference to the Ukraine war.
Ahead of the Foreign Ministers meeting, western and non-western blocks have reasserted their conflicting positions on the Ukraine war, which is likely to impact the proceedings of the meeting in New Delhi.
At the end of the meeting, the G-20 declaration is likely to be issued. While India has stayed away from explicitly condemning Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has categorically stated that “this is not the era of war”.
In Indonesia which held the G-20 presidency last year, the grouping could not arrive at a consensus on a joint declaration and New Delhi is likely to adopt the same path when the meeting ends on March 2.
The crucial misses?
Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will not attend the meeting and the country will be represented by State Minister for Foreign Affairs Kenji Yamada, according to Japan’s foreign ministry statement. South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin is also skipping the meeting.
The decision of the foreign ministers of two crucial countries and allies of India to skip the G-20 meeting is likely to weigh heavily on New Delhi which has invested a lot of diplomatic capital in making the event a grand spectacle of India’s growing clout in international affairs.
Japan’s message to India?
While India and Japan are strategic allies and trade partners who are also part of the Quad grouping, a US-led alliance against China dubbed as the ‘Asian NATO’, it is not clear why Tokyo decided to send a junior foreign minister to such an important event in New Delhi.
Dr Satoru Nagao, a foreign policy fellow at US-based Hudson Institute, tweeted that India will be “very upset” if Hayashi skips the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting “because India is concentrating their efforts on the G20. For high pride Indians, it will be shane (sic). It will affect later, seriously. Foreign Minister Hayashi must go.”
Despite being partners, India and Japan have taken contrasting positions on the war in Ukraine and Hayashi’s visit was expected to bring synergy to bilateral relations between the two countries. By having a junior minister attend the G-20 meeting, is Japan sending a message to India?
South Korea’s ‘domestic engagement’
On February 24, South Korea announced that its foreign minister Park Jin would skip the meeting due to the “schedule of parliament” and the junior foreign minister Lee Do-hoon will replace him in New Delhi. According to a report in Khyunghyang Shinmun, a Seoul-based daily, Jin had expected to meet with his newly-appointed Chinese counterpart Qin Gang but the meeting could not be arranged.
Jin had also expected to meet Hayashi on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting but after learning that his Japanese counterpart will not attend the meeting, South Korea also decided to give the meeting a skip.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone. The opinions and facts in this article do not represent the stand of News9.)
Jenhangir Ali
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