G20 needs to focus on pressing global challenges, says Sherpa Amitabh Kant

KUMARAKOM: “Welcome Sherpas, may the backwaters lead you forward” – this message on a billboard that greets top G20 officials gathering in Kerala’s Kottayam district sums up India’s approach towards a crucial meeting being held under the divisive shadow of the Ukraine crisis.

The G20 sherpas or personal representatives of heads of state and government of the world’s largest economies will engage in discussions at Kumarakom over the next two days to assess the work done in more than 40 meetings on different tracks and to prepare the grounds for the leaders’ summit to be held in New Delhi in September.

“We will not get bogged down with Ukraine and Russia. Other pressing issues such as rising inflation, global debt, poverty, climate action and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) have to be centre stage,” India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Thursday evening.

The G20 sherpas are meeting after two other crucial gatherings of finance ministers in Bengaluru and foreign ministers in New Delhi concluded without a joint communique because of differences between G7 member states and the combo of China and Russia on the text to describe the Ukraine war.

Indian officials privately contend that the country’s G20 presidency is better placed than Indonesia’s presidency in 2022 when Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov walked out of a stormy foreign ministers’ meeting last July and G7 representatives refused to be seen with Russian officials.

“At least, we have officials of all G20 states sitting in the same room and discussing important issues. This is all part of India’s ability to convene and bring everyone together,” an official said on condition of anonymity.

The messaging from the Indian side is very focused – the G20 needs to concentrate on bigger economic and development challenges of a world that has been buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis. Or as another billboard close to the venue of the G20 sherpas’ meeting puts it: “Climate change, terrorism and pandemics can only be solved by acting together.”

The G7 states, and Russia and China, are divided over two paragraphs of text that was agreed to at the last G20 Summit in Bali last year to denounce the invasion of Ukraine while incorporating the views of other countries regarding sanctions and other punitive measures. Chinese and Russian officials, including Lavrov, have contended in recent weeks that these paragraphs cannot be included in the joint communique since the situation in Ukraine has changed over the past six months.

Kant said the Indian side has been able to get the G20 members to reach an agreement on “99%” of the issues being discussed and that the two paragraphs related to the Ukraine crisis are contentious not because of the position taken by the Indian side.

“It has nothing to do with India. There is a geopolitical scenario that’s outside India’s control. But we’ll do everything [to ensure] that G20 remains the forum for growth, development and financial progress,” he told reporters.

Kaant, who had an hour-long bilateral meeting with Russian Sherpa Svetlana Lukash on Thursday, said India will work very closely with all G20 members to ensure that the Russia-Ukraine issue does not hold back many other pressing matters, such as the Covid-19 crisis driving 200 million people below the poverty line and global debt impacting 75 countries.

“These are far more important issues...that are impacting the rest of the world. These are very important issues that G20 is responsible for,” Kant said. “We are friends with every single country in the G20, we openly raise our issues, they raise their concerns and then we decide to discuss further and take things forward.”

Kant acknowledged that the situation on the ground in the Ukraine crisis has changed and this issue will be discussed over the next two days. “Hopefully, Kumarakom will provide peace and serenity to all the delegates here and the backwaters will enable us in the coming days to...take the challenges of the world forward,” he said.

Officials who declined to be named also said that while the Indian side has been able to contain the fallout of the Ukraine war to some extent, the situation could change in the event of any fresh offensive in the dragging war or any developments with significant consequences. “Then, it will be a whole new ball game,” one official said.

India has so far refrained from publicly censuring Russia’s actions, including at the UN General Assembly and Security Council, though Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting last year that “today’s era is not of war”. India has also snapped up discounted Russian commodities such as crude and fertilisers and Russia has emerged as one of the country’s largest suppliers of oil.

Kant also held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Italy and Brazil and participated in a meeting of the G20 “troika” comprising India, past president Indonesia and incoming president Brazil. The South African sherpa also joined the troika meeting.