G20 foreign ministers meeting: Ukraine to take centre stage at Delhi talks

MARCH 2: India's S Jaishankar will meet his American, Chinese and Russian counterparts among others on Thursday.

Delhi wants to use the platform to raise issues of developing countries known as the Global South.

But experts say that divisions within the group over the war in Ukraine will test India's diplomacy.

India has resisted the pressure and continued with its strategy of not criticising Russia directly. The country has regularly abstained from voting on UN resolutions condemning the war in Ukraine, including a vote held at the UN General Assembly last week.

India may not have criticised Russia directly but it has talked about the importance of "the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states" in its past statements on Ukraine.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last autumn was viewed as indirect criticism of Russia. "Today's era is not of war," Mr Modi told the meeting in Uzbekistan in the presence of President Putin

Also last week, G20 finance ministers failed to reach a consensus on a closing statement at their meeting in Bangalore (Bengaluru) city, in the first ministerial meeting in the run up to the summit later this year.

Both Moscow and Beijing declined to accept parts of a closing statement that deplored Russia's aggression "in the strongest terms". In the end, India had to release a chair's summary which noted "different assessments of the situation" in Ukraine within the group.

"This war has to be condemned," Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told reporters after the meeting, according to news agency Reuters.

"I hope, I am sure that India's diplomatic capacity will be used in order to make Russia understand that this war has to finish," he said.

Analysts say tensions over Ukraine are expected to overshadow talks on Thursday as well.

The meeting is being attended by 40 delegations, including those led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

On Wednesday, India's top diplomat Vinay Kwatra said that while the war in Ukraine would be an important point of discussion, "questions relating to food, energy and fertiliser security, the impact that the conflict has on these economic challenges that we face" would also receive "due focus".

India has been positioning itself as a leading voice of developing countries - known as the Global South - in recent years, and experts say it wants to use its G20 presidency to focus on issues it sees as more urgent for the developing world.