No Consensus Among G20 Members Due To Russia-Ukraine War

New Delhi: The Foreign Ministers’ meeting of Group of 20 (G20) industrialised and developing nations ended here on Thursday without a consensus due to differences on the Ukraine war.

India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said there were “divergences” on the issue of the war in Ukraine “which we could not reconcile as various parties held differing views.”

“The officials negotiated, but there were a large number of issues which were agreed by the members, like multilateralism, gender issues, counter terrorism, anti-narcotics — I don’t want to put a per cent on it. The bulk of the issues concerning the global south were agreed in the outcome document.”

But, he added there were contentious issues concerning the Ukraine conflict.

“There was a chair summary and not a joint commune. If we had a perfect meeting of minds on all issues, it would have been a collective statement. We couldn’t get everyone on the same table because of the ongoing conflict,” Jaishankar said during a press conference.

The External Affairs minister said that the G20 meeting saw participation of all member nations and 13 guest countries.

As many as 27 foreign ministers joined the meeting Thursday.

“This was the largest gathering of G20 foreign ministers hosted by G20 presidency (India). Multilateralism is in crisis today in terms of preventing future wars and terrorism,” Jaishankar said.