Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Saturday the G20 had received consensus on leaders’ declaration. “There is good news, with everyone’s cooperation, consensus has been reached on the New Delhi G20 Leadership Declaration,’’ PM Modi announced on the opening day of the G20 Summit to applause from the other leaders and delegates.
The unanimous adoption of New Delhi G20 Leadership Declaration means a diplomatic victory for India which had been trying hard to avoid a split in the G20 over the issue of including references to Ukraine in the Joint Declaration which runs into 38 pages and spans about 75 paragraphs.
“I recommend that this Declaration be adopted,’’ said the PM. There was no elaboration on the language in the relevant paras on Ukraine that led to a change in the rigid stance adopted by both protagonists for the last year.
“India’s expectation is that all G20 members will move towards a consensus and we are hopeful of a consensus on the communique,” said Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra had said on Friday. “Our New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration is almost ready, and only after it is accepted by the leaders, we will be able to talk about the actual achievements of this declaration,” India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant had noted
Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister opened his address by expressing condolences to the people affected by the earthquake in Morocco. The focus of the PM’s speech was the need for G20 to find solutions to age-old challenges facing humanity.
“And, therefore, we have to move forward with a human-centric approach while fulfilling our every responsibility. After Covid, a major crisis in the world has come from the lack of trust. The war has deepened this trust deficit. When we can defeat Covid, we can also overcome this crisis of mutual trust.
“India’s G-20 Presidency has become a symbol of inclusion, “Sabka Saath”, both within and outside the country. In India, it became the People’s G-20. Crores of Indians joined it. More than 200 meetings were held in more than 60 cities of the country,’’ observed the PM.
“It is in that spirit that India had proposed the African Union be given permanent membership of the G-20,’’ he observed. The prominent issues that figure in the Joint Declaration being decided on at the summit include more loans to developing reform of international debt architecture, regulations on cryptocurrency and the impact of geopolitics on food and energy security.
