During a press conference on G20 outcomes, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that G20 has arrived at a consensus on many important issues, and has been adopted as a Chairs Summary and Outcome document.
Speaking on the failure to issue a joint communique, Mr. Jaishankar said, “There was a large number of issues where there was agreement: multilateralism, food and energy security, climate change, gender issues, global health, terrorism. There was a considerable meeting of minds. If we had a perfect meeting of minds, we could have had a collective statement, but divergences on Ukraine did come in the way of that.
“Despite differences on Ukraine, we all were able to reach consensus on other issues,” Mr. Jaishankar said.
All G20 countries condemned terrorism in all its forms, we discussed counter narcotics for first time too.
He added that during the meeting PM Modi said multilateralism, global governance is failing and the countries in the global south are the worst hit. He has asked the Foreign Ministers to focus not on what divides us but what unites us, the EAM said.
India has been saying that the costs of fuel, food, fertilizer are make or break issues for Global South, they are very damaging, Mr. Jaishankar said.
On meeting China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Mr. Jaishankar said that he spoke with Mr. Gang for 45 minutes during which the focus of the conversation was mainly on the boundary issue.
