RIO DE JANEIRO: G20 foreign ministers open a two-day meeting Wednesday in Brazil, with the outlook bleak for progress on a thorny agenda of conflicts and crises, from the Gaza and Ukraine wars to growing polarization.
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are both expected in Rio de Janeiro for the first high-level G20 meeting of the year \u2014 though not China\u2019s Wang Yi.
\nIn a world torn by conflicts and divisions, Brazil, which took over the rotating G20 presidency from India in December, has voiced hopes for what President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls \u201cthe forum with the greatest capacity to positively influence the international agenda.\u201d
\nBut Lula\u2019s bid to make the G20 a space for finding common ground suffered Sunday when the veteran leftist ignited a diplomatic firestorm by accusing Israel of \u201cgenocide,\u201d comparing its military campaign in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust.
\nThe comments drew outrage in Israel, which declared him \u201cpersona non grata,\u201d and could overshadow any bid to de-escalate the conflict via the G20.
\n\u201cIf Lula imagined he was going to propose peace resolutions on Israel or Ukraine, that just got swept off the table,\u201d international relations specialist Igor Lucena told AFP.
\nMore than four months after the Gaza war started with Hamas fighters\u2019 unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which has vowed to wipe out the Islamist group in retaliation, there is little sign of progress toward peace.
\nA new UN Security Council resolution on a ceasefire was vetoed Tuesday by the United States, which said the text would endanger ongoing negotiations, including on the release of Hamas-held hostages.
\nThe outlook is similarly downbeat on Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, which also has G20 members divided.
\nDespite a push from Western countries for the group to condemn President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion, the G20\u2019s last summit, held in New Delhi in September, ended with a watered-down statement that denounced the use of force but did not explicitly name Russia, which maintains friendly ties with fellow members like India and Brazil.
\nUnderlining the G20 stalemate, the G7 group of top economies \u2014 Ukrainian allies Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States \u2014 will hold its own virtual meeting on the war Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n
Held at a marina on the Rio waterfront, the G20 meeting will open with a session on \u201caddressing international tensions.\u201d
\nThe ministers will discuss global governance reform Thursday \u2014 a favorite issue for Brazil, which wants a greater voice for the global south at institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank.
\n\u201cThe number and gravity of conflicts has returned to the level of the Cold War. That brings new urgency to the issue,\u201d said Brazil\u2019s top diplomat for G20 political negotiations, Mauricio Lyrio.
\n\u201cWe need to adapt the international system to prevent new conflicts,\u201d he told journalists Tuesday. \u201cNow, we\u2019re just putting out fires.\u201d
\nBrazil also wants to use its G20 presidency to push the fights against poverty and climate change.
\nThere will also be space for bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the gathering \u2014 though a Blinken-Lavrov encounter looks unlikely, given the exploding tension over Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny\u2019s death in prison Friday.
\nBlinken and Lavrov last met in person at a G20 gathering in India in March 2023.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1999, the Group of 20 brings together most of the world\u2019s biggest economies.
\nOriginally an economic forum, it has grown increasingly involved in international politics.
\nBut the prospects for major advances via the group are dim in a year when elections will be held in some 50 countries, including key G20 members such as the United States and Russia, said Lucena.
\n\u201cReaching big agreements will be difficult,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a favorable environment for resolving conflicts. On the contrary.\u201d
\nA Brazilian government source said that after recent G20 struggles for consensus, the hosts axed the requirement that every meeting produce a joint statement \u2014 with the exception of the annual leaders\u2019 summit, scheduled for November in Rio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RIO DE JANEIRO: G20 foreign ministers open a two-day meeting Wednesday in Brazil, with the outlook bleak for progress on a thorny agenda of conflicts and crises, from the Gaza and Ukraine wars to growing polarization. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are both expected in Rio de Janeiro …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61010,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61006\/revisions\/61010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}