European diplomacy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday he saw “improvements” in diplomatic relations with Moscow following a G20 meeting in New Delhi where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Russian minister on Thursday of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. In the meeting, which lasted only a few minutes, Blinken called for an end to Russia’s “war of aggression” in Ukraine.
Borrell noted that Lavrov remained in the room when Western countries criticized Russia, unlike last year’s meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali.
Despite the lack of understanding among the heads of G20 diplomacy, which remained without consensus, as was the case last week at the Bangalore financial meeting, Borrell said there had been “a big improvement” compared to the top of the leaders in Bali last year .
“In Bali, the foreign minister [russo, Sergey] Lavrov came, spoke and left. At least this time he stayed and listened.”
Lavrov, for his part, believed that the G20, established as a forum for economic debate for the world’s major economies and emerging countries, was losing its purpose with debates on the Ukraine issue, under pressure from Washington to corner Russia.
“No one cared about anything except financial and macroeconomic policy,” which is why “the G20 was formed,” Russian foreign minister saidin a session of the Raisina dialogue.
When Antony Blinken blamed Russia and its actions in Ukraine for failures in multilateral systems, Lavrov accused the West of preventing the adoption of a joint statement.
China has accused the US of “fanning the fires of war” by sending weapons to Ukraine.
The EU’s high representative for foreign policy said on Friday that the G20 has similar flaws to other geopolitical forums after the group failed to reach an agreement over tensions over the war in Ukraine.
“The G20 has a specific role to play, but it is no longer an economic forum, it has become a geopolitical forum,” said Josep Borrell in New Delhi.
The EU High Representative noted that G20 foreign ministers found “the same fault lines as in other forums”, with tensions between the United States and Western allies and Russia over the war in Ukraine, as well as friction between Washington and Beijing .
“In today’s world, we have two trends (…) one is the competition between China and the US, which will be one of the great strategic forces of this century and will increase, and the second is that we are not living in a multilateral world but in a multipolar world,” said Borrell, in a speech delivered at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s annual geopolitical conference jointly organized by the State Department and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
India, which holds the rotating presidency of the group and hosts the event, sought to put key issues such as the food and energy crisis, which particularly affects developing countries, at the center of the debates.
Source: DN
