Tag: G 20 summit

To counter China, Biden is backing the World Bank for a bigger role on the global stage

During the G20 leaders’ summit, U.S. President Joe Biden called on G20 leaders to support the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to increase their ability to support low and middle-income countries. From left, World Bank President Ajay Banga, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and U.S. President Joe Biden in New Delhi on Sept. 9, 2023.

Evan Vucci | Afp | Getty Images

World leaders have called for the World Bank’s expansion to boost its lending capacity — but that can’t happen without funding from the private sector, the bank said.

The World Bank is no longer just focused on eradicating poverty, but also on other impending global challenges — like pandemics, climate change and food insecurity, its president Ajay Banga told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill on Saturday.

“There’s no way there’s enough money in the multilateral development bank, or even in governments … that can drive the kinds of changes we need for this polycrisis. Getting the private sectors’ capital and ingenuity into the game is going to be very important,” he told CNBC in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Group of 20 nations leaders’ summit in New Delhi.

“We are digging deep to boost our lending capacity, but we are going further, creating new mechanisms that would allow us to do even more,” Banga said at the G20 leaders summit.

“We’re working to expand concessional financing to help more low-income countries achieve their goals, while thinking creatively about how to encourage cooperation across borders and tackle shared challenges,” he added.

Biden backs World Bank

Leaders at the summit agreed that this isn’t something the World Bank can tackle alone.

During the summit, U.S. President Joe Biden called on G20 leaders to further support the World Bank and other multilateral development banks over the next year in order to increase the institution’s ability to support low and middle-income countries.

Biden has asked Congress to increase the World Bank’s financing by more than $25 billion, a move that will enable the bank to further help developing countries achieve their development and economic goals.

The world needs institutions to work together.

Kristalina Georgieva

Managing Director, IMF

“This initiative will make the World Bank a stronger institution that is able to provide resources at the scale and speed needed to tackle global challenges and address the urgent needs of the poorest countries,” the White House said.

The World Bank was created in 1944 to help rebuilding efforts in Europe and Japan after the Second World War. It started with just 38 members but today includes most of the countries in the world.

Biden has previously said that developing countries need more funding options to reduce their dependency on China, and help them recover from the effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The administration asked for $3.3 billion to increase development and infrastructure finance by the World Bank.

“It is essential that we offer a credible alternative to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) coercive and unsustainable lending and infrastructure projects for developing countries around the world,” the White House said in August.

Apart from providing more resources to help developing countries reduce poverty, the World Bank’s expansion also aims to help these nations in their renewable energy transition.

“I do have the idea that if I could get a certain amount of money in the bank to put into say, renewable energy, could I get the private sector to put one-is-to-one, two-is-to-one, three-is-to-one?” Banga said.

He highlighted that investors are keen on investing in renewable energy in developing countries, and are confident that solar, wind and geothermal projects “can be built to make money.”

‘Work together’

Both the World Bank and IMF have pledged to form a stronger partnership to help countries with their debt struggles, sustainability goals, and digital transition.

In a separate interview with CNBC’s Martin Soong at the G20 summit, the IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said: “The world has changed. the horizon of how many different lenders there are and different conditions they provide their resources, is much, much broader that it was 10 years ago.”

“We need this conversation because if you don’t have it, we have no solutions and the debt problem is very pressing,” Georgieva said Sunday.

She added that “25% of debt of emerging markets is treading in distressed territory.”

“We now have more than half of of the low income countries either in or close to that distress.”

The IMF Chief reiterated that the World Bank and the fund must work to complement each other and promote synergies.

“The bank has very deep sectoral expertise. We don’t and we would never ever get into sectoral investments,” she explained.

“What we bring is how you can use fiscal policies to advance the transition to digital economy; how you can use monetary policy to assess the new types of risks — including from crypto from climate; and how you can use data to cover what matters to policymakers today and in the future.”

“The world needs institutions to work together,” she added, pledging that both the IMF and World Bank will work with others to “set the right example of what it means for the whole to be bigger than the sum of individual parts.”

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September 11, 2023
The world has changed and institutions need to work together, says IMF chief

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The IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva tells CNBC’s Martin Soong that the World Bank and IMF are complementary but yet have differing expertise. “The world needs institutions to work together,” she said in an exclusive CNBC interview on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit.

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September 10, 2023
Is it India? Is it Bharat? Speculations abound as government pushes for the country’s Sanskrit name

NEW DELHI — It began with a dinner invitation. How it ends could affect more than a billion people.

State-issued invites sent to guests of this week’s G20 meeting referred to India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, as “President of Bharat.” Suddenly, in many circles, the question was everywhere: Would the country of more than 1.4 billion now be called by its ancient Sanskrit name?

Since then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s ministers, his Hindu nationalist supporters, Bollywood stars and cricketers have made similar public proclamations: India should officially be rebranded as Bharat.

India is known by two names: India, used worldwide, and the Sanskrit and Hindi nomenclature of “Bharat.” Now, Modi’s government is signaling that Indians should shed the name India and instead call their country Bharat.

The possibility is resonating with Hindu nationalists who form the prime minister’s core vote base. Their stated reason: the name “India” is tied to colonialism and slavery, a sentiment that Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has long shared. But the reasons — political, cultural, historical — run far deeper.

A name — be it of a person or an entire country — is many things. It’s descriptive, emotionally important and deeply wrapped up in identity. So when it comes to a whole nation, a name change is not a small thing.

Around the world, there have been some notable national rebrandings in recent decades as nations shed names inflicted by colonial rulers. Ceylon was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972. Rhodesia got rebranded as Zimbabwe in 1980. Burma became Myanmar in 1989. And last year, Turkey was officially changed to Türkiye. The list goes on — Cambodia to Kampuchea, Swaziland to Eswatini, Malaya to Malaysia.

In India, the country’s renaming demands stem from a more cultural and religious perspective. They are often invoked by Hindu nationalists who say the name Bharat is more authentic to the nation’s past.

Officially, the Indian government has made no decision and issued no statement, and one senior leader dismissed the speculations of a name change as “just rumors.” But India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, seemed to advocate the increased use of Bharat this week.

“‘India, that is Bharat’ — it is there in the constitution. Please, I would invite everybody to read it,” Jaishankar said Wednesday.

Indeed, India’s constitution uses the term Bharat just once: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” Everywhere else, the country is referred to as India in English.

The name Bharat is an ancient Sanskrit word that many historians believe dates back to early Hindu scriptures. “India” has etymological roots in the Indus River, which was called “Sindhu” in Sanskrit. Another popular but not legally recognized name for the country is Hindustan, which means “land of the Indus” in Persian. All three names were in use long before British rule.

But Modi’s government, which won 2014 national polls and returned to power in 2019, has a penchant for changing names.

It has done so with various cities, towns and prominent roads that were long associated with the British rule and Muslim heritage, arguing it is an ongoing effort to salvage the country from the taint of colonialism and so-called Muslim invaders. Prominent among such efforts is the government’s renaming of the northern city of Allahabad — named by Muslim Mughal rulers centuries ago — to the Sanskrit word “Prayagraj.”

The name-changing exercise is fraught with a political motivation that is an essential ingredient of the ruling government’s revisionist agenda and has, under Modi’s rule, come amid increasing attacks by Hindu nationalists against minorities, particularly Muslims. A largely Hindu country that has long proclaimed its multicultural character, India has a sizable Muslim minority — 14% of the population.

Already, Indians and even foreigners are tacitly being nudged to get used to the revised nomenclature of the country.

A government-made mobile application for media and G20 delegates attending the summit says Bharat is the official name of the country — a first public proclamation of its kind during any global event. Visiting guests for the summit are also being welcomed to the host’s capital city with giant billboards that refer to the country as both Bharat and India.

Efforts to change India’s name have been made in the past through court cases, but judges have so far steered away from the issue. However, an upcoming session of the federal Parliament — a surprise announcement made by the Modi government without disclosing any agenda — has prompted speculation. Opposition parties say an official rebranding could very well be in the cards.

In July, India’s opposition parties announced a new alliance called INDIA in an effort to unseat Modi and defeat his party ahead of national elections in 2024. The acronym stands for “Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.” Since then, some officials in Modi’s party have demanded that the country be called Bharat instead of India.

The formation of that alliance, says Zoya Hasan, an Indian academic and political scientist, “could be the immediate provocation here.”

“It’s a political debate which is aimed at embarrassing the opposition who have re-appropriated the nationalism platform with their new name,” Hasan said. “This rattled the ruling establishment, and they want to regain their monopoly over nationalism by invoking Bharat.”

She also said the timing of suddenly using Bharat is curious given one particular recent event. The chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a radical Hindu movement widely accused of stoking religious hatred with aggressively anti-Muslim views, recently urged Indians to use the Sanskrit name more often. The RSS is the ideological mother ship of Modi’s party, and the prime minister has been its lifelong member.

“They can call it Bharat. It’s one of the official names. But there’s no need to erase India,” Hasan said, adding that the furor is a “needless controversy” as both names “have happily coexisted.”

Modi’s party leaders, meanwhile, have celebrated what they call a much-needed change.

“REPUBLIC OF BHARAT — happy and proud that our civilisation is marching ahead boldly towards AMRIT KAAL,” BJP politician Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Amrit Kaal” is a Hindi phrase meaning “auspicious era” that Modi often uses to describe what he calls is India’s resurgence under his government.

Modi’s opponents have been less welcoming, with many saying the government’s priorities are misplaced amid more pressing crises like increasing unemployment, widening religious strife and the backsliding of democracy. They also say his government is rattled by the INDIA grouping, and have — at least sarcastically — suggested they might change the alliance’s name as a countermove.

“We could of course call ourselves the Alliance for Betterment, Harmony And Responsible Advancement for Tomorrow (BHARAT),” opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor wrote on X. “Then perhaps the ruling party might stop this fatuous game of changing names.”

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Associated Press writer Krutika Pathi contributed to this report.

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September 7, 2023
Biden aims to use G20 summit and Vietnam visit to highlight US as trustworthy alternative to China

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants to demonstrate to the world at the Group of 20 summit in India and during a stop in Vietnam that the United States and its like-minded allies are better economic and security partners than China.

White House officials said Biden, who departed Thursday evening for New Delhi, will use the annual G20 gathering as an opportunity for the United States to highlight a proposition for developing and middle-income countries that would increase the lending power of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund by some $200 billion.

That is an attempt to offer a significant, albeit smaller, alternative to China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which the U.S. views as a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to skip the summit, where Premier Li Qiang will represent the country.

After the summit, Biden and Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong will meet in Hanoi and are expected to announce plans to tighten economic cooperation.

Vietnam and China have robust trade relations, but also deep differences. Vietnam, like Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei, has been in a tense territorial standoff for decades with China, which has claimed authority over waters in the South China Sea that are hundreds of miles from the Chinese coastline.

“I think Xi’s absence at this particular summit, if that comes to pass, really is a big missed opportunity for the Chinese,” said Colleen Cottle, deputy director at the Washington think tank Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. “And I think it affords the Biden administration even more of a chance to go on the offensive in terms of stepping up and showing … what their value proposition is to the Global South.”

The leaders of the U.S., India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were also working to finalize a major joint infrastructure deal during New Delhi summit, according to an official familiar with the matter.

The official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter before a formal announcement, said the project will help connect Gulf and Arab countries with a network of railways. It will also connect India to shipping lanes from ports in the region.

Axios first reported on the emerging deal.

Heading into the summit, the U.S. has criticized China for reducing the transparency of its reporting on basic economic data in recent months and for cracking down on companies in China that had been providing such data.

At the same time, the White House has tried to improve ties. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who recently returned from China, was the latest administration officials to engage Beijing amid disputes over technology, security, Taiwan and other issues.

Raimondo told The Associated Press that “the world is looking for the U.S. and China to responsibly manage our relationship.” She said the administration’s goal is to have a stable economic relationship in which there is consistent engagement. But Xi’s decision to not attend the G20 shows that “we have work to do” regarding communication between the countries, she said.

“Communication is of course, a two-way street,” Raimondo said. “Communication does need to lead to action.”

Biden said he was disappointed that Xi will not be in New Delhi, where the summit is expected to focus on climate, development and the future of the grouping of leading economies. Biden decided to skip this week’s gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta, Indonesia, and sent Vice President Kamala Harris.

The U.S. has criticized China’s lending practices under Belt and Road as “coercive,” saying the $1 trillion infrastructure effort that provides Chinese loan assistance to poor countries often comes with strings attached that restrict the restructuring of debt with other major creditor nations. China also frequently retains the right to demand repayment at any time, giving Beijing leverage over other countries.

A recent Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China, including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia, found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of tax revenue. Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than one-third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the effort to bolster the lending capacity of the World Bank and the IMF would provide a “credible alternative” to China.

Biden included $3.3 billion for both institutions in the supplemental budget request he has sent to Congress. The administration said the money would help leverage nearly $50 billion from the U.S. alone in lending for middle-income and poor countries and up to $200 billion around the world.

“We believe that there should be high-standard, noncoercive lending options available to low- and middle-income countries,” Sullivan said

Xi is trying to navigate through one of the most turbulent moments for China’s economy in decades.

The Chinese economy is weighed down by a property bubble, local government debt, high youth unemployment and a broader inability to rebound as expected from pandemic lockdowns. Added to that is the longer-term challenge of China’s population starting to decline due to aging and lower birth rates.

“There is a loss of confidence or a lack of confidence in China’s economic recovery, both domestically in China and outside China now,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center. She said the lack of confidence is impacting China’s ability to generate investment it needs.

Most conventional economic analyses assume the U.S. economy and its allies are largely insulated from a Chinese slowdown. There are supply chain risks if factories close in China and global growth struggles. But so far this year, the U.S. economy has outperformed expectations as the Chinese economy has underperformed.

Xi countered in a speech published last month that the U.S. and its allies “cannot curb the greedy nature of capital and cannot solve chronic diseases such as materialism and spiritual poverty.” He suggested his model of a government with centralized power will do more to serve the interests of ”the vast majority of people.”

How China navigates through its economic headwinds is a big question for the White House. The administration has tried to have a stable trade relationship, even as it has frustrated China by restricting imports of advanced technology for national security purposes. U.S. officials have emphasized the importance of an ongoing dialogue between the governments of the world’s two largest economies.

Still, China’s economic challenges could create more geopolitical risk as economics can often inform national security strategies. At an August fundraiser in Utah, Biden called China’s economy a “ticking time bomb.”

“When bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” the president said.

The White House said G20 leaders will also discuss the global impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and joint efforts combating climate change. Any summit agreements on the climate front are expected to be incremental at best. G20 climate and environment ministers, at their July meeting, were unable to come to agreement on a goal of peaking emissions by 2025, moving to clean energy and a tax on carbon as a way to reduce emissions.

Biden is also scheduled to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he arrives in India on Friday evening.

Biden has put much effort into bolstering his relations with Modi, a conservative Hindu nationalist leading the world’s most populous country. The U.S.-India relationship will be vital in coming decades as both sides deal with an ascendant China and the enormity of climate change, artificial intelligence, supply chain resilience and other issues.

Biden hosted Modi in June for a pomp-filled state visit.

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Associated Press journalist Tracy Brown contributed to this report.

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September 7, 2023
Biden aims to use G20 summit and Vietnam visit to highlight US as trustworthy alternative to China

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is looking to demonstrate to the world at the Group of 20 summit in India and during a stop in Vietnam that the United States and its like-minded allies are better economic and security partners than China.

White House officials said Biden, who was set to depart for New Delhi on Thursday evening, will use this year’s G20 gathering as an opportunity for the United States to highlight a proposition for developing and middle income countries that would increase the lending power of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund by some $200 billion.

That is an attempt to offer a significant, albeit smaller, alternative to China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which the U.S. views as a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to skip the summit, where Premier Li Qiang will represent the country.

Afterward the summit, Biden and Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong will meet in Hanoi and are expected to announce plans to tighten economic cooperation.

Vietnam and China have robust trade relations, but also deep differences. Vietnam, like Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei, has been in a tense territorial standoff for decades with China, which has claimed authority over waters in the South China Sea that are hundreds of miles from the Chinese coastline.

“I think Xi’s absence at this particular summit, if that comes to pass, really is a big missed opportunity for the Chinese,” said Colleen Cottle, deputy director at the Washington think tank Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. “And I think it affords the Biden administration even more of a chance to go on the offensive in terms of stepping up and showing … what their value proposition is to the Global South.”

Heading into the summit, the U.S. has criticized China for reducing the transparency of its reporting on basic economic data in recent months and for cracking down on companies in China that had been providing such data.

At the same time, the White House has tried to improve ties. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who recently returned from China, was the latest administration officials to engage Beijing amid disputes over technology, security, Taiwan and other issues.

Raimondo told The Associated Press that “the world is looking for the U.S. and China to responsibly manage our relationship.” She said the administration’s goal is to have a stable economic relationship in which there is consistent engagement. But Xi’s decision to not attend the G20 shows that “we have work to do” regarding communication between the countries, she said.

“Communication is of course, a two-way street,” Raimondo said. “Communication does need to lead to action.”

Biden said he was disappointed that Xi will not be in New Delhi, where the summit is expected to focus on climate, development and the future of the grouping of leading economies. Biden decided to skip this week’s gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta, Indonesia, and sent Vice President Kamala Harris.

The U.S. has criticized China’s lending practices under Belt and Road as “coercive,” saying the $1 trillion infrastructure effort that provides Chinese loan assistance to poor countries often comes with strings attached that restrict the restructuring of debt with other major creditor nations. China also frequently retains the right to demand repayment at any time, giving Beijing leverage over other countries.

A recent Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China, including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia, found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of tax revenue. Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than one-third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the effort to bolster the lending capacity of the World Bank and the IMF would provide a “credible alternative” to China.

Biden included $3.3 billion for both institutions in the supplemental budget request he has sent to Congress. The administration said the money would help leverage nearly $50 billion from the U.S. alone in lending for middle-income and poor countries and up to $200 billion around the world.

“We believe that there should be high-standard, noncoercive lending options available to low- and middle-income countries,” Sullivan said

Xi is trying to navigate through one of the most turbulent moments for China’s economy in decades.

The Chinese economy is weighed down by a property bubble, local government debt, high youth unemployment and a broader inability to rebound as expected from pandemic lockdowns. Added to that is the longer-term challenge of China’s population starting to decline because of an aging population and lower birth rates.

“There is a loss of confidence or a lack of confidence in China’s economic recovery, both domestically in China and outside China now,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center. She said the lack of confidence is impacting China’s ability to generate investment it needs to right the ship.

Most conventional economic analyses assume the U.S. economy and its allies are largely insulated from a Chinese slowdown. There are supply chain risks if factories close in China and global growth struggles. But so far this year, the U.S. economy has outperformed expectations as the Chinese economy has underperformed.

Xi countered in a speech published last month that the U.S. and its allies “cannot curb the greedy nature of capital and cannot solve chronic diseases such as materialism and spiritual poverty.” He suggested his model of a government with centralized power will do more to serve the interests of ”the vast majority of people.”

How China navigates through its economic headwinds is a big question for the White House. The administration has tried to have a stable trade relationship, even as it has frustrated China by restricting imports of advanced technology for national security purposes. U.S. officials have emphasized the importance of an ongoing dialogue between the governments of the world’s two largest economies.

Still, China’s economic challenges could create more geopolitical risk as economics can often inform national security strategies. At an August fundraiser in Utah, Biden called China’s economy a “ticking time bomb.”

“When bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” the president said.

The White House said G20 leaders will also discuss the global impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and joint efforts combating climate change. Any summit agreements on the climate front are expected to be incremental at best. G20 climate and environment ministers, at their July meeting, were unable to come to agreement on a goal of peaking emissions by 2025, moving to clean energy and a tax on carbon as a way to reduce emissions.

Biden is also scheduled to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon after his scheduled arrival in India on Friday evening.

Biden has put much effort into bolstering his relations with Modi, a conservative Hindu nationalist leading the world’s most populous country. The U.S.-India relationship will be vital in coming decades as both sides deal with an ascendant China and the enormity of climate change, artificial intelligence, supply chain resilience and other issues.

Biden hosted Modi in June for a pomp-filled state visit.

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Associated Press journalist Tracy Brown contributed to this report.

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September 7, 2023
India’s rising geopolitical clout will be tested as it hosts the G20 summit

NEW DELHI — Ahead of India’s hosting of the G20 summit of leading economies, its prime minister invited 125 mostly developing countries to a virtual meeting in January to signal New Delhi’s intention to be their champion on the world stage.

As the leaders logged onto Zoom, Prime Minister Narendra Modi listed major challenges he said could be better addressed if developing countries had a bigger share in the emerging global order: the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, terrorism, the war in Ukraine.

“The world is in a state of crisis,” Modi said. “Most of the global challenges have not been created by the Global South. But they affect us more.”

India has pledged to amplify the voice of the so-called Global South — a wide of expanse of mostly developing countries, many of them former colonies, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Oceania and the Caribbean.

That pledge will be put to the test this week when world leaders arrive in New Delhi for this year’s G20 summit, which begins Saturday. But India has promoted itself not only as a bridge to the developing world, but as a rising global player and — importantly — a mediator between the West and Russia.

Steering through fractures among the world’s various blocs over Russia’s war in Ukraine will be a “diplomatic high-wire act” for India, said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

None of the several G20 meetings this year have produced a communique, with Russia and China vetoing wording on the war that they once agreed to at last year’s summit in Indonesia, when the summit statement noted that “most members strongly condemned” the invasion.

If leaders don’t break this deadlock over the weekend, it could lead to the first time that the group’s summit has ended without a communique, an unprecedented setback for the grouping, said John Kirton, director and founder of the G20 Research Group.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not attending and neither is China’s leader Xi Jinping. Both are sending representatives.

Given New Delhi’s historic ties with Moscow, its surging relationship with the West, and its hostility with Beijing over a years-long boundary dispute, Modi is in a diplomatically complicated position.

India has relied on Russia, its Cold War era ally, for military hardware for decades — and more recently, for record amounts of cheap oil. Despite India’s refusal to directly condemn Russia over the war, the West and allies have courted the country aggressively as they bank on it as a bulwark against China’s growing ambitions.

U.S. President Joe Biden pulled out the red carpet for Modi recently as the two signed a slate of deals, the Indian prime minister was a guest of honor at France’s Bastille Day parade, and he was invited to attend the G7 summit a few months ago.

“Is Prime Minister Modi as skilled and as committed as President Widodo of Indonesia was last year to find a way to produce a communique? That’s more of an open question given the progress of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Kirton said.

As the split over Ukraine casts a shadow over the G20, India has focused on issues affecting developing countries, like food and fuel insecurity, rising inflation, debt and reforms of multilateral development banks. And in a bid to make the G20 more inclusive, Modi has proposed the African Union become a permanent member.

Many G20 countries want to focus on calling out Russia, but for a number of developing nations dealing with local conflicts and extreme weather events, the Ukraine war is not as big a priority, said Happymon Jacob, founder of the New Delhi-based Council for Strategic and Defense Research.

“There’s a feeling (in the Global South) that conflicts in other parts of the world, be it Afghanistan, Myanmar or Africa, are not taken as seriously by developed countries or in forums like the G20,” Jacob said.

A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit in March suggested growing support for Moscow from the developing world, with the number of countries actively condemning Russia falling from 131 to 122.

“Some emerging economies have shifted to a neutral position,” it noted.

The number of countries that lean toward Russia jumped from 29 a year ago to 35, it said. South Africa, Mali and Burkina Faso had moved into this group, highlighting Moscow’s rising influence in Africa. China remained the most prominent of the countries leaning toward Russia.

As India progresses economically, it increasingly leans toward the West — which is welcomed by Western powers — but it also sees itself as a counterweight to China in vying for influence in the developing world with which it has historic ties, Jacob said.

India has identified with the Global South since its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, though Modi has renewed the emphasis on the phrase, using it frequently over the past year or two.

“India’s trying to ensure that the Global South doesn’t go into the Chinese camp,” Jacob said.

Vaishnav said India is in “a geopolitical sweet spot.” Its economy is among the fastest growing for major countries, it has a large working age population as the West ages, and its neutral stance on the Ukraine war has only boosted its diplomatic sway at the G20. The global spotlight could also help Modi’s popularity ahead of a crucial general election next year.

On the other hand, unemployment remains a big concern as hundreds of millions struggle for work in the country’s large but still widely unequal economy. And even as Modi touts democratic principles abroad, critics accuse his Hindu nationalist government of stifling dissent, stoking religious violence and weakening independent institutions at home.

So far, Modi has promoted a feeling that, “given the geopolitical landscape, the world needs India as much – if not more – than India needs the world,” Vaishnav said.

“But the risk is that if we see domestic instability such that corporations and governments start to hedge their bets, and if India is no longer seen as delivering on its ability to counter China … there could be some diplomatic costs,” he said.

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September 6, 2023
China’s Xi will skip G20 summit in India during a period of soured bilateral relations

BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping is apparently skipping this week’s Group of 20 summit in India as bilateral relations remain icy.

Instead, Premier Li Qiang will represent China at the Sept. 9-10 gathering, the Foreign Ministry said Monday in a one-sentence notice on its website.

Relations between China and India have grown frosty over their disputed border. Three years ago, the tensions resulted in a clash in the Ladakh region that killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers. It turned into a long-running standoff in the rugged mountainous area, where each side has stationed tens of thousands of military personnel backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets.

Frictions have also risen over trade and India’s growing strategic ties with China’s main rival, the United States. Both India and China have expelled the other’s journalists.

India recently overtook China as the world’s most populous nation and the two are rivals in technology, space exploration and global trade.

Asked why Xi would not be attending the summit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to answer.

“The G20 is a major forum for international economic cooperation. China has always attached great importance to and actively participated in relevant activities,” Mao told reporters at a daily briefing.

“Premier Li Qiang will elaborate on China’s views and propositions on G20 cooperation, promote the G20 to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and work together to address global economic and development challenges,” she said.

Mao said China is ready to work with all parties “to jointly promote the success of the G20” summit and “make positive contributions to promoting the stable recovery of the world economy and promoting sustainable development.”

Chinese and Indian military commanders met just last month and pledged to “maintain the peace and tranquility” along their disputed border, in an apparent effort to stabilize the situation.

The Line of Actual Control separates Chinese- and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. India and China fought a war over their border in 1962. As its name suggests, the line divides the areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.

According to India, the de facto border is 3,488 kilometers (2,167 miles) long, but China promotes a considerably shorter figure.

In all, China claims some 90,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) of territory in India’s northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population.

India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current faceoff is happening.

China, in the meantime, began cementing relations with India’s archrival Pakistan and backing it on the issue of disputed Kashmir.

Firefights broke out in 1967 and 1975, leading to deaths on both sides. They have since adopted protocols, including an agreement not to use firearms, but those protocols have fractured.

Other than the potential effects on China-India relations, Xi’s absence at the summit will also eliminate the possibility of an interaction with President Joe Biden. China-U.S. relations remain at a historic low despite recent visits by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other officials to Beijing.

Speculation had churned for days that Xi would not attend, and even before China’s official announcement, Biden on Sunday told reporters he did not expect a meeting with the Chinese leader.

“I am disappointed, but I am going to get to see him,” Biden said.

It is not clear when such a meeting could take place as a question mark now hangs over whether Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leader’s gathering in San Francisco in November.

China has demanded that the U.S. invite Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee to the forum despite a U.S. visa ban over his role in crushing the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city’s pro-democracy movement.

Aa post Monday on the Ministry of State Security’s social media site accused the U.S. of sending mixed signals to China as part of a strategy of “obstruction, containment and suppression.”

The post from the ministry — China’s equivalent to the former Soviet Union’s KGB — condemned U.S. support for self-governing Taiwan, economic competition, America’s challenging of China’s claim to the South China Sea and accusations of human rights abuses in Tibet.

“To truly realize ‘from Bali to San Francisco,’ the United States must present sufficient sincerity,” the post said, referencing the most recent meeting between the two heads of state on the Indonesian island of Bali at last November’s G20 summit.

Xi has accumulated more power at home than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, and has adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to what he views as China’s territorial interests in the South China Sea and toward self-governing Taiwan, which China threatens to annex by force if necessary.

At the same time, China has struggled to recover economically from the hard-line policies it took to control COVID-19. Foreign businesses also have complained of an increasingly difficult environment in which to invest in and trade with the country.

Xi will not be the only foreign head of state absent from the summit. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces war crimes charges over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will also be skipping the summit, although he does plan to visit close partner China next month.

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September 4, 2023
China’s Xi will skip G20 summit in India because of downturn in relations and Premier Li Qiang will attend instead

China’s Xi will skip G20 summit in India because of downturn in relations and Premier Li Qiang will attend instead

ByThe Associated Press

September 4, 2023, 3:27 AM

BEIJING — China’s Xi will skip G20 summit in India because of downturn in relations and Premier Li Qiang will attend instead.

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September 4, 2023
New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city’s poor say they were simply erased

NEW DELHI — New Delhi’s crowded streets have been resurfaced. Streetlights are illuminating once dark sidewalks. City buildings and walls are painted with bright murals and graffiti. Planted flowers are everywhere.

Many of the city’s poor say they were simply erased, much like the stray dogs and monkeys that have been removed from some neighborhoods, as India’s capital got its makeover ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government hopes the elaborate effort to make New Delhi sparkle — a “beautification project” with a price tag of $120 million — will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage.

But for many street vendors and those crammed into New Delhi’s shantytowns, the makeover has meant displacement and loss of livelihood, raising questions about the government’s policies on dealing with poverty. In a city of more than 20 million people, the 2011 census had the homeless at 47,000 but activists say that was a vast underestimate and that the real number is at least 150,000.

Since January, hundreds of houses and roadside stalls have been demolished, displacing thousands of people. Dozens of shantytowns were raised to the ground, with many residents getting eviction notices only a short while before the demolitions got underway.

Authorities say the demolitions were carried out against “illegal encroachers,” but right activists and those evicted question the policy and allege that it has pushed thousands more into homelessness.

Similar demolitions have also been carried out in other Indian cities like Mumbai and Kolkata that have hosted various G20 events leading up to this weekend’s summit.

Activists say it was more than just a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Abdul Shakeel, with the activist group Basti Suraksha Manch, or Save Colony Forum, says that “in the name of beautification, the urban poor’s lives are destroyed.”

“The money used for G20 is taxpayers’ money. Everyone pays the tax. Same money is being used to evict and displace them,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The two-day global summit will take place at the newly constructed Bharat Mandapam building, a sprawling exhibition center in the heart of New Delhi near the landmark India Gate monument — and scores of world leaders are expected to attend. The G20 includes the world’s 19 wealthiest countries plus the European Union. India currently holds its presidency, which rotates annually among the members.

In July, a report by the Concerned Citizens Collective, a rights activist group, found that the preparations for the G20 summit resulted in the displacement of nearly 300,000 people, particularly from the neighborhoods that foreign leaders and diplomats will visit during various meetings.

At least 25 shantytowns and multiple night shelters for the homeless were razed to the ground and turned into parks, the report said, adding that the government failed to provide alternative shelters or places for the newly homeless.

Last month, Indian police intervened to stop a meeting of prominent activists, academics and politicians critical of Modi and his government’s role in hosting the G20 summit and questioning whose interests the summit would benefit.

“I can see the homeless on the streets … and now the homeless are not allowed to live on the streets either,” said Rekha Devi, a New Delhi resident who attended the Aug. 20 gathering.

Devi, whose home was demolished in one of the drives, said authorities refused to consider documents she showed as proof that her family had lived in the same house for nearly 100 years.

“Everyone is behaving as if they are blind,” Devi said. “In the name of the G20 event, the farmers, workers and the poor are suffering.”

Home to 1.4 billion people, India’s struggle to end poverty remains daunting, even though a recent government report said that nearly 135 million — almost 10% of the country’s population — moved out of so-called multidimensional poverty between 2016 and 2021. The concept takes into consideration not just monetary poverty but also how lack of education, infrastructure and services affect a person’s quality of life.

Indian authorities have been criticized in the past for clearing away homeless encampments and shantytowns ahead of major events.

In 2020, the government hastily erected a half-kilometer (1,640-foot) brick wall in the state of Gujarat ahead of a visit by then-President Donald Trump, with critics saying it was built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people. Similar demolitions were also carried out during the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Some street vendors say they are helpless, stuck between sacrificing their livelihoods for India’s pride and wanting to earn a living.

Shankar Lal, who sells chickpea curry with fried flatbread, said authorities told him three months ago to move away. These days, the only time he gets to open his stall along a busy New Delhi road near the G20 summit venue is on Sundays, when police pay less attention to the street vendors.

It’s not enough to eke out a living.

“These are government rules, and we’ll do what we are told,” Lal said. “The government doesn’t know whether we are dying of hunger or not.”

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September 3, 2023
South Korea’s Yoon will call for strong response to North’s nuclear weapons at ASEAN and G20 summits

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president says he’ll tell world leaders about the need to faithfully enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea and block the country’s illicit activities to fund its weapons programs when they converge in Indonesia and India for annual summits this week.

President Yoon Suk Yeol is to visit Jakarta for four days starting Tuesday to attend a series of summits scheduled on the margins of a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders. On Friday, he’ll travel on to New Delhi for a summit of the leading rich and developing nations.

“At the upcoming ASEAN-related Summits and the G20 Summit, I intend to urge the international community to resolutely respond to North Korea’s ever-escalating missile provocations and nuclear threats and to work closely together on its denuclearization,” Yoon said in written responses to questions from The Associated Press.

“As long as the U.N. Security Council sanctions currently in place are faithfully implemented, North Korea’s financial means for developing (weapons of mass destruction) can be blocked to a significant extent,” Yoon said.

Despite the economic troubles deepened mainly by its draconian pandemic curbs, North Korea has been performing a record number of missile tests since last year. South Korean officials believe the North’s weapons programs are increasingly financed by illicit activities like cyber hacking and the export of banned items. A large number of North Korean workers has also reportedly remained in China and Russia despite a U.N. order for member states to repatriate all North Korean guest workers — a key source of foreign currency for the North — by December 2019.

Yoon said he will particularly use the Group of 20 summit to underscore “the need to actively deter North Korea from stealing cryptocurrency, dispatching workers overseas, facilitating maritime transshipments and other illegal activities — the main funding sources for its nuclear and missile development.”

North Korea’s advancing nuclear arsenal is the most vexing security concern for South Korea, but it also poses serious threats to the United States and Japan. North Korea’s long-range missiles target the mainland U.S., while its shorter-range missiles are capable of reaching South Korea and Japan, both key U.S. allies.

In a trilateral summit at Camp David in August, Yoon, President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to hold annual trilateral exercises and put into operation by year’s end the sharing of real-time missile warning data on North Korea. The three also decided to establish a trilateral working group to boost cooperation to combat North Korean cyber threats and block its cyber-enabled evasion of sanctions.

North Korea reacted angrily, accusing the three leaders of plotting nuclear war provocations on the Korean Peninsula. Leader Kim Jong Un called Yoon, Biden and Kishida “the gang bosses” of the three countries.

Yoon, citing unspecified recent assessments, said North Korea is in its worst economic condition since Kim took power in late 2011.

“North Korean authorities are wasting scarce financial resources on the development of nuclear and missile capabilities. Consequently, the hardships faced by North Koreans in their everyday lives are worsening, and its economy continues to register negative growth,” Yoon said. “Amid such circumstances, unless North Korea stops its nuclear development, the regime’s instability will continue to increase.”

North Korea has been trying to deepen cooperation with China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council who have repeatedly blocked the U.S. and others’ attempts to toughen U.N. sanctions on the North despite its run of prohibited missile tests. Foreign experts also believe China and Russia have not fully implemented U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

U.S. officials suspect North Korea has shipped artillery shells and other ammunition to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine. Last week, the White House said Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged letters as Moscow looks to Pyongyang for more munitions.

Yoon said China “seems to have considerable leverage” over North Korea, adding that about 97% of North Korea’s total external trade volume last year was with China.

“What really matters is whether Beijing will use its leverage, and if so, how much and in what way,” Yoon said.

Yoon said China must put forth “constructive efforts to denuclearize North Korea” if the North continues its banned missile tests. He said China must realize that North Korea’s nuclear program has “a negative effect on China’s national interests by further disrupting regional order among other things.”

The exact status of North Korea’s nuclear capability is unclear, with experts divided over whether the country possesses functioning nuclear-tipped missiles. But most agree that Kim won’t likely voluntarily abandon his nuclear program, the backbone of his authoritarian rule. They believe North Korea would eventually aim to use its enlarged nuclear arsenal to win sanctions relief from the U.S.

Last week, North Korea said it conducted missile tests to simulate nuclear attacks on South Korea and rehearsed an occupation of the South’s territory in response to the summer South Korea-U.S. military drills.

“The international community must clearly demonstrate that its determination to stop North Korea’s nuclear program is much stronger than North Korea’s will to continue developing it,” Yoon said.

In Jakarta, Yoon is to attend the South Korea-ASEAN summit, the ASEAN Plus Three (South Korea-Japan-China) summit, and the East Asia Summit, a gathering of Indo-Pacific nations including the U.S., China and Russia.

Yoon said the joint South Korea-U.S.-Japan statement issued after the Camp David summit clearly emphasizes the importance the three countries place on ASEAN and Pacific Island countries by prioritizing cooperation with them over any other regional issues.

Yoon said he sees the G20 summit as an opportunity for South Korea to lead G20 cooperation to resolve the challenges humanity is facing. He said South Korea will expand its contributions to help climate-vulnerable countries and strengthen cooperation with the international community for the transition to clean energy.

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Find more AP coverage of the Asia-Pacific region at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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September 3, 2023
Vice President Kamala Harris to face doubts and dysfunction at Southeast Asia summit

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will deepen her outreach to Southeast Asia this week at an international summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she’ll try to erase doubts about U.S. commitment to the region stirred by President Joe Biden’s absence.

It’s Harris’ third trip to Southeast Asia and fourth to Asia overall, and she’s touched down in more countries there than any other continent. The repeat visits, in addition to meetings that she’s hosted in Washington, have positioned Harris as a key interlocutor for the administration as it tries to bolster a network of partnerships to counterbalance Chinese influence.

This latest journey is another opportunity for Harris to burnish her foreign policy credentials as she prepares for a bruising campaign year. She’s already come under attack from Republican presidential candidates who say she’s unprepared to step up if Biden — the oldest U.S. president in history — can’t finish a second term.

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said Harris has “made our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific a key part of her agenda as vice president,” and he described her itinerary as “perfectly in keeping with the issues that she’s been focused on.”

But Biden’s decision to skip the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, has caused some frustration, particularly because he’s already going to be in India and Vietnam around the same time. The president’s proximity makes his nonattendance “all the more more glaring than would otherwise be the case,” said Marty Natalegawa, Indonesia’s former foreign affairs minister.

However, Natalegawa conceded that ASEAN is struggling to convince world leaders that it deserves to play a central role in the region. That’s even though the alliance represents more than 650 million people across 10 nations that collectively have the world’s fifth largest economy.

The organization has not resolved civil strife in Myanmar, which saw a military coup two years ago and has been disinvited from meetings. A peace plan reached with the country’s top general did not lead to any progress.

Negotiations over territorial claims in the South China Sea remain bogged down as well, and ASEAN faces internal disagreements over global competition between the United States and China. Some members, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, have sought closer ties with Washington, while Cambodia remains firmly in Beijing’s orbit.

“We can complain all we want about other countries not respecting us or not coming to our summits,” Natalegawa said. “But ultimately, it is actually a point of reflection.”

Unless ASEAN becomes more effective, Natalegawa said, “we may end up with less and less leaders turning up.”

Kirby, the national security spokesman, rejected the idea that Biden was snubbing the organization or the region.

“It’s just impossible to look at the record that this administration has put forward and say that we are somehow walking away,” Kirby said, noting that Biden already hosted the first-ever Washington summit with ASEAN leaders last year.

Ja-Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said Harris’ presence helps the U.S. cover its bases at an event that may not prove productive on key issues.

“You want to show that you’re paying attention, you send the vice president,” he said.

Harris is scheduled to depart Monday morning and spend two days enmeshed in meetings in Jakarta. Her office has not yet detailed her schedule, but she’s expected to attend summit events and hold individual talks with some foreign leaders.

Soon after Harris returns from Indonesia, Biden is headed to India for the annual Group of 20 summit, which pulls together many of the world’s richest countries and is a staple of any presidents’ calendar. Then he plans to stop in Vietnam, where he’s focused on strengthening ties with a country that is an emerging economic power.

“I don’t fault the administration for the choice that they made. It’s just unfortunate that they had to make that choice,” said Gregory B. Poling, who directs the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Leaders are gathering in Jakarta amid heightened tension over the South China Sea after Beijing released a new official map that emphasizes its territorial claims there.

The map has angered other nations that consider the waters to be part of their own territory or international byways. The South China Sea is a critical crossroads for global trade.

U.S. officials and analysts believe Beijing’s aggressive approach to the region has created an opening for Washington to forge stronger partnerships.

“In many ways, the PRC is doing its work for us,” said David Stilwell, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. Stilwell served as the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Donald Trump.

Although much of Biden’s recent attention has been on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he’s left no doubt that he considers China to be the top foreign policy challenge for the U.S. He’s described much of his agenda, both domestic and overseas, as an effort to deter Beijing from supplanting Washington as the most powerful worldwide force.

Sometimes his warnings take a darker turn. During a recent fundraiser for his reelection campaign in Park City, Utah, Biden described China as a “ticking time bomb” because of its economic and demographic challenges.

“That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” he said.

Harris has previously visited Singapore and Vietnam, Japan and South Korea, and the Philippines and Thailand.

Many of her travels have been geared toward the global rivalry with China.

Speaking from the deck of a U.S. Navy destroyer docked near Tokyo last year, Harris said China has “challenged freedom of the seas” and “flexed its military and economic might to coerce and intimidate its neighbors.”

Harris also became the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Palawan, a Filipino island adjacent to the South China Sea that has been a front line for the territorial disputes. She said that Washington would support the Philippines “in the face of intimidation and coercion.”

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Associated Press writer Edna Tarigan contributed from Jakarta, Indonesia.

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September 3, 2023
As G20 leaders prepare to meet in recently flooded New Delhi, climate policy issues are unresolved

NEW DELHI — Rekha Devi, a 30-year-old farm worker, is dreading the moment when her family will be ordered to leave their makeshift tent atop a half-built overpass and return to the Yamuna River floodplains below, where their hut and small field of vegetables is still under water from July’s devastating rains.

Devi, her husband and their six children fled as the record monsoon rains triggered flooding that killed more than 100 people in northern India, displaced thousands and inundated large parts of the capital, New Delhi. The waters took her husband’s work tools, the children’s school uniforms and books and everything else the family had accumulated over 20 years, forcing them and thousands of others into makeshift relief camps.

Their temporary perch is less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the site of this weekend’s Group of 20 summit at which leaders will have a final chance to decide how to better protect people like Devi when the next extreme weather event batters the city. But she expects little — except eviction as part of security measures for the meetings.

“If the leaders lived here, would they have taken their kids into the deep waters to live? Right now, no one is doing anything for us. We will see when they do something,” she said.

Despite cyclones, extreme rains, landslides and extreme heat affecting India and the rest of the world in the last few months, climate ministers of the G20 nations — the world’s largest economies and producers of most of its greenhouse gases —ended their last meeting for the year in July without resolving major disagreements on climate policies.

Energy experts said key bottlenecks include nations failing to agree on proposals to cap global emissions of carbon dioxide by 2025, set up a carbon border tax, scale up renewable energy, phase down all fossil fuels and increase aid to nations hit hardest by climate change.

Shayak Sengupta, an energy and research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation America, conceded there were no broad agreements on reducing fossil fuels or increasing renewables.

“However, I was encouraged to see that there were initiatives on specific sectors like green hydrogen, critical minerals, energy efficiency, finance for the energy transition and energy access,” said Sengupta, based in Washington.

The G20’s top leaders will have a last chance to send a strong message of climate action at their meetings on Saturday and Sunday.

The hope is they “will be able to come out with an ambitious agenda that can not only show that the G20 can act but will also bolster confidence going into the global climate meetings in December,” said Madhura Joshi, energy analyst at the climate think tank E3G.

The annual global climate conference, COP28, will be held in Dubai this year. Joshi said she is hopeful because “writing off the world’s 20 largest economies completely would mean that there are more concerns for the world as a whole.”

Experts say one reason the talks among climate ministers haven’t produced concrete results is that the decisions necessary are bigger than those ministers can take.

“We need to ask if climate ministers have the mandate to negotiate now on these big issues like climate and energy,” said Luca Bergamaschi, CEO of Italian climate think tank Ecco Climate and former head of the Italian government’s climate team.

Beramaschi said India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose nation holds the G20 presidency through November, has an opportunity step up as a global leader and “broker for international commitment between the West and the rest of the world,” especially in relation to climate and energy negotiations.

“We need leaders to say we need to do more” on climate change, Beramaschi said. “More on moving away from fossil fuels and increase renewable energy, I think that sends a really strong message.”

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Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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September 3, 2023
UN chief is globetrotting to four major meetings before the gathering of world leaders in September

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief is going globetrotting to four major meetings before the biggest meeting of all – the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly starting Sept. 18.

Secretary-General António Guterres heads first to Nairobi on Saturday for the Africa Climate Summit on Sept. 4-5, then to Jakarta for a U.N. summit with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations known as ASEAN on Sept. 6-7.

From there, he flies to New Delhi for the G20 summit of the world’s 20 major economies on Sept. 8-10 and then briefly returns to New York before heading to Havana for the summit of the G77 — a coalition of some 134 developing countries and China — on Sept. 14-15.

He will arrive back in New York just before the General Assembly’s high-level week begins, where the war in Ukraine is expected to dominate the annual meeting for a second year.

Albania’s U.N. Ambassador Ferit Hoxha, this month’s president of the U.N. Security Council, told reporters Friday he could “almost confirm” that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend the global gathering in person for the first time, and speak at a council meeting on Sept. 20 on upholding the U.N. Charter in Ukraine.

The high-level week starts with a summit to spur global action on the U.N.’s badly lagging development goals for 2030 on Sept. 18, a day ahead of the official opening of the General Debate — the official name of the world leaders’ annual meeting.

It begins on Sept. 19 with Guterres’ annual report on the state of the world, and speaking to reporters Thursday he gave a preview of his concerns.

The secretary-general said the multiplicity of summits “reflects the growing multipolarity of our world.” But he stressed that having different power centers “does not guarantee peace and security.”

On the contrary, Guterres said, without strong global institutions “multipolarity could be a factor for escalating geostrategic tensions, with tragic consequences.”

Guterres said he will be delivering the same message to all the meetings he attends this month: Reforms are essential “to bring our outdated multilateral institutions and frameworks in line with the economic and political realities of today’s world, based on equity and solidarity.”

As one example, Guterres has been campaigning for years to reform the international financial architecture so that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank reflect “the power and economic relations of today’s world” not the ones of post-World War II when they were established.

At the Africa Climate Summit, the U.N. chief said he will address “two burning injustices of the climate crisis.”

First, African countries have contributed almost nothing to global warming “and yet they are on the frontlines of today’s super-charged storms, droughts and floods,” Guterres said. Secondly, while Africa has abundant solar, wind, hydro power and critical minerals, its governments face high levels of debt and interest rates that impede their investments in renewable energy.

“We need global efforts to put Africa at the forefront of the renewables revolution,” he said.

At the ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Guterres said he will be promoting the organization as a bridge-builder between east and west as well as its five-point plan and efforts to engage all parties in the Myanmar conflict sparked by the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

At the G20 summit in New Delhi, the secretary-general said he will tell the planet’s biggest emitters that “as climate chaos gathers pace, the world is looking to them” to accelerate their emissions reductions and support countries now paying the price for decades of heating caused by fossil fuels.

At the final summit in Havana of the G77, Guterres said he will focus on getting the 2030 U.N. development goals back on track, including ending extreme poverty and hunger, ensuring every child has a quality secondary education and achieving gender equality.

Looking ahead to the annual U.N. meeting of global leaders, Guterres stressed the importance of diplomacy “to navigate the tensions of our emerging multipolar world.”

“Dialogue remains the only way to find joint approaches and common solutions to the global threats and challenges that we face,” he said.

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September 1, 2023
India protests China’s land claim ahead of the G20 summit President Xi Jinping is expected to attend

NEW DELHI — India is protesting a new Chinese map that lays claim to India’s territory ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, a foreign ministry official said, exacerbating tensions during a three-year military standoff between the two nations.

The timing of the protest is key, as Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the summit of industrialized and developing countries.

“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” the External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in a statement on Tuesday.

He said India on Tuesday formally lodged the objection through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 “standard map” of China that lays claim to India’s territory.

The version of the Chinese map published on the website of the Ministry of Natural Resources clearly shows Arunachal Pradesh and the Doklam Plateau, over which the two sides have feuded, included within Chinese borders, along with Aksai Chin in the western section which China controls but India still claims.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar Subhramanyam also dismissed China’s claim in a television interview on Tuesday night.

“Making absurd claims on India’s territory does not make it China’s territory,” Jaishankar said.

China recently refused to put visas in the passports of officials from Arunachal Pradesh state in India’s northeast, using a stapled-in certificate instead. It also refuses to recognize India’s sovereignty over its part of Kashmir and declined to send a delegation to a G20 meeting in Srinagar in May.

Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi informally spoke to China’s President Xi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, where Modi highlighted New Delhi’s concerns about their unresolved border issues.

India’s foreign ministry said the two leaders agreed to intensify efforts to de-escalate tensions at the disputed border between them and bring home thousands of their troops deployed there.

The disputed boundary has led to a three-year standoff between tens of thousands of Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh area. A clash three years ago in the region killed 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.

“The two sides should bear in mind the overall interests of their bilateral relations and handle properly the border issue so as to jointly safeguard peace and tranquility in the border region,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said after the two leaders’ meeting.

Indian and Chinese military commanders had met earlier this month in an apparent effort to stabilize the situation. A border, dubbed the “Line of Actual Control,” separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

India and China had fought a war over their border in 1962. China claims some 90,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) of territory in India’s northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population.

India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current faceoff is happening.

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Associated Press Writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to the report from Beijing.

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August 29, 2023
Chinese Australian writer fears dying in Beijing detention after being diagnosed with a kidney cyst

CANBERRA, Australia — Chinese Australian writer and democracy blogger Yang Hengjun has told his family he fears he will die in a Beijing detention center after being diagnosed with a kidney cyst, prompting supporters to demand his release for medical treatment.

Yang has been detained in China since Jan. 19, 2019, when he arrived in Guangzhou from New York with his wife and teenage stepdaughter.

The Associated Press on Monday saw details of a message from Yang that has circulated among his family and friends since last week in which he said a doctor told him recently that the cause of what felt like muscle strain was a 10-centimeter (4-inch) cyst on a kidney.

The doctor said no treatment is required unless the cyst becomes too painful, ruptures or bleeds, Yang said.

Yang, 58, shared frustration at the prospect of dying in detention without being able to speak his truth to the outside world. He also proposed writing a will.

Yang’s friend, University of Technology Sydney academic Feng Chongyi, said supporters urged the Australian government to secure Yang’s release to Australia on medical grounds or at least a conditional release for medical treatment outside the detention center.

Supporters also want the government to gain access to Yang’s medical records to receive a second opinion.

“They can use medicines to kill prisoners rather than save them. That’s my fear,” Feng said. “It’s a very dangerous situation if you need an operation. That operation might just kill you.”

The plights of Yang and another Chinese Australian in detention in China, journalist Cheng Lei, are frequently on the agendas of high-level meetings between the countries.

Yang’s supporters hope Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will raise his case again with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a meeting on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations in India next month.

Albanese raised the issue of the two Chinese Australians when he first met Xi last year.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the government will continue to advocate for Yang.

“We make representations to the Chinese government whenever we can, and that literally means constantly, in respect of all the consular cases that exist with China and that includes this individual,” Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“We will continue to advocate on behalf of this person to the Chinese government and do everything we can for his circumstances,” Marles said.

Yang received a closed-door trial on an espionage charge in Beijing in May 2021 and is still awaiting a verdict.

Announcement of a verdict has been postponed for three months 10 times and the next possible ruling is Oct. 9.

Cheng, a 48-year-old journalist formerly employed by China’s state broadcaster, was convicted on national security charges at a closed-door trial last year. She has yet to be sentenced.

In a letter to the Australian public on Aug. 11, the third anniversary of her detention, Cheng spoke about her living conditions, saying she was allowed to stand in sunlight for just 10 hours a year.

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August 28, 2023
Modi says India as G20 host will be inclusive and invites African Union to become permanent members

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country’s role as the G20 host this year would focus on highlighting the concerns of the developing world, and has proposed the African Union to become permanent members of the forum.

“We have a vision of inclusiveness and with that vision, we have invited the African Union to become permanent members of the G20,” Modi said on Sunday as he addressed the Business 20 Summit in New Delhi.

The B20 is an industry event and part of the summit of the 20 leading rich and developing nations, which will be hosted in the Indian capital next month.

Over three days, industry and policy leaders from around the world have discussed themes like building resilient supply chains, digital transformation, debt distress facing developing countries and how to advance on climate change goals. Their recommendations will be shared with the G20 governments, organizers said.

As host of the G20 this year, India has struggled to bridge the differences among member countries over the war in Ukraine. None of the several meetings held in the country has succeeded in producing a communique, sparking questions over whether the leaders meeting next month will break the deadlock.

Instead, India has consistently appealed for the fractured grouping to reach consensus on issues that disproportionately affect developing countries, or the so-called Global South. They include unsustainable debt levels, inflation and the threat of climate change, even if the broader East-West split over Ukraine can’t be resolved.

A key part of that strategy is bringing the African Union into the G20 fold, analysts say.

“When India assumed the G20 presidency last December, we were acutely conscious that most of the Global South would not be at the table when we meet,” said External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. “This mattered very much because the really urgent problems are those faced by them. … And India, itself so much a part of the Global South, could not stand by and let that happen.”

He said the G20 has so far deliberated on rising debt, sustainable development, climate action and food security, among other issues that affect low to middle-income countries. “The core mandate of the G20 is to promote economic growth and development. This cannot advance if the crucial concerns of the Global South are not addressed,” Jaishankar added.

The three-day conference in New Delhi was also attended by ministers and policymakers from other G20 countries, including the United Kingdom and India’s regional rival, China.

On Friday, China’s Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said trade between the two neighboring countries, whose relations have been strained after deadly border clashes in 2020, was growing fast. He added that India was welcome to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a China-centered Asian trade bloc that was formed last year.

Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of commerce and industry, said that joining the bloc would have increased trade between the two Asian giants, but it would have also increased the trade deficit.

“We just can’t seem to understand the kind of pricing, the kind of cost at which you are supplying goods. It’s a matter that I think all the ministers would like to know. How you can supply goods at less than the raw material costs?”

India’s trade deficit with China is the highest of any country, and stood at $101.28 billion in 2022, according to official data.

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August 27, 2023
A plan for how Indonesia will spend $20 billion to transition to cleaner energy has been submitted

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A plan for how Indonesia will spend $20 billion to transition to cleaner energy was submitted Wednesday to the government and its financing partners, the planners said.

Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership deal was announced last year and aims to use the funds over the next three to five years to accelerate retirement of the nation’s coal plants and development of renewable energy.

Details were not made public. The investment plan will be reviewed and revised further by Indonesia and its JETP partners before being made available for public review and comment, according to a statement from Indonesia’s JETP Secretariat.

“The Indonesian public will have the opportunity to review the full draft text of the (plan) and submit comments and feedback,” Dadan Kusdiana, Indonesia’s Secretary General of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said in a statement.

A person with direct knowledge of the talks who was not authorized to comment on the deal told The Associated Press that new information regarding the country’s captive coal and mineral processing infrastructure and difficulties matching the financing with potential transition projects were some of the crucial reasons why the details were still being negotiated.

“We welcome the submission of the (plan) to the Indonesian government. We understand that this is a global effort to address a very complex problem in Indonesia. We will review and ensure that it is aligned with Indonesia’s priorities in energy transition,” Rachmat Kaimuddin, Indonesia’s deputy coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, wrote in a statement.

The investment and policy plan comes after Indonesia’s JETP was announced at the Group of 20 summit in November 2022. The deal also shifted Indonesia’s renewable energy policy, which will need to account for some one-third of the country’s power production by 2030.

Experts have warned that Indonesia’s JETP deal and energy transition face significant challenges including retiring a relatively new network of coal plants, securing enough financing for the transition and ensuring it’s equitable for those who are likely to be impacted by the transition, such as the some 250,000 people employed by the country’s coal industry.

The Indonesian government also plans to build new coal-fired power plants to power strategic infrastructure projects such as smelters, raising concern amongst stakeholders and environmental activists alike.

“The International Partner’s Group failure to discourage the development of captive coal power plants would stifle any progress made from the JETP’s early retirement of coal power plants, and compromise the gains from rolling out renewable energy,” said Binbin Mariana, an Asia energy finance campaigner at Market Forces, a nongovernmental organization that monitors investments.

Local stakeholders have also expressed concern over how the JETP funds will be provided via a mix of grants, concessional loans, market-rate loans, guarantees, and private investments. Indonesia’s JETP deal is anticipated to be comprised of some $10 billion in public sector pledges and another $10 billion from private lenders, coordinated by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which includes Bank of America, Citi, Standard Chartered and other major banks.

“We definitely would like to see more grants or concessional loans as the bigger part of the funding,” said Anissa Suharsono, an associate with International Institute for Sustainable Development.

While some $20 billion is pledged through the JETP, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates Indonesia would need $163.5 billion for its renewable energy technology, grid expansion and storage needs through 2030.

The emissions targets could also still be part of the plan’s negotiations, said Deon Arinaldo, a program manager at the Institute for Essential Services Reform.

According to research published last year by IESR and the University of Maryland, a more ambitious target than specified in the JETP and Indonesia’s current regulation must be implemented in order to be compatible with the 1.5 °C target goal of the Paris Agreement, which calls for countries to take concerted climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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August 16, 2023
Yellen visits India again to promote closer ties and tackle global economic problems

GANDHINAGAR, India — On the heels of a trip to Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is back in India for the third time in nine months, this time to meet finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations about global economic challenges like the increased threat of debt defaults facing low-income countries.

Yellen told reporters in Gandhinagar, the capital of the western Indian state of Gujarat, on Sunday that she was trying to foster warming relations between the U.S. and India. She also plans a stop in Hanoi, Vietnam, to address supply chain reliability, clean energy transition and other matters of economic resilience.

Yellen said her goals for her time in India were to press for debt restructuring in developing countries in economic distress, push to modernize global development banks to make them more climate-focused and deepen the ever-growing U.S.-India relationship.

Yellen’s frequent stops in the country signal the importance of that relationship at a time of tension with China.

India’s longstanding relationship with Russia has also loomed as the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine continues despite U.S. and allied countries’ efforts to sanction and economically bludgeon Russia’s economy. India has not taken part in the efforts to punish Russia and maintains energy trade with that country despite a Group of Seven agreed-upon price cap on Russian oil, which has seen some success in slowing Russia’s economy.

Yellen said ending the war in Ukraine “is first and foremost a moral imperative. But it’s also the single best thing we can do for the global economy.”

She added the U.S. would continue to cut off Russia’s access to the military equipment and technologies that it needs to wage war against Ukraine.

“One of our core goals this year is to combat Russia’s efforts to evade our sanctions. Our coalition is building on the actions we’ve taken in recent months to crack down on these efforts,” Yellen said.

The U.S. increasingly relies on India and has courted its leaders.

She said the U.S. sees India as an indispensable partner in its friend-shoring strategy for increasing the resilience of supply chains.

She added private U.S. firms sees India as an excellent place for producing goods and exporting to the United States.

She also noted that slowing growth in China has impacted growth in many other countries.

“It is something I discussed with my Chinese counterparts. I think the Chinese are anxious to communicate that their business environment is open. There is a desire certainly to see foreign investment,” Yellen said.

President Joe Biden hosted a White House state visit honoring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June, designed to highlight and foster ties. The two leaders pronounced the U.S.-India relationship never stronger and rolled out new business deals between the nations.

Raymond Vickery Jr., a policy expert on U.S.-India relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Yellen’s coming to India shortly after visiting China is meaningful in that Indian officials “are going to want to know in great detail what happened in the meetings with her Chinese counterparts and see where it fits with their perspective on economic relations with China.”

“They’re going to want to know whether or not the United States is serious about moving some of its sourcing activity from China to India.”

A senior Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview Yellen’s trip, said there was hope that debt treatments for Ghana and Sri Lanka will be discussed and completed quickly at the meetings.

Sri Lanka and Ghana defaulted on their international debts last year, roughly two years after Zambia defaulted. And more than half of all low-income countries face debt distress, which hurts their long-term ability to function and develop.

Last month, Zambia and its government creditors, including China, reached a deal to restructure $6.3 billion in loans, on the sidelines of a global finance summit in Paris.

The agreement covers loans from countries such as France, the U.K., South Africa, Israel and India as well as China — Zambia’s biggest creditor at $4.1 billion of the total. The deal may provide a roadmap for how China will handle restructuring deals with other nations in debt distress.

Yellen’s trip comes shortly after she spent a week in China, meeting the nation’s finance ministry and discussing mutual trade restrictions and national security concerns.

Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Yellen’s trip to India “is a reflection of a naturally developing alliance.”

“India has a great deal of tension with China — they have constant border disputes,” he said.” And India wants to develop and has developed into sort of an Indian Ocean naval power, which is also a region that China wants to develop.”

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July 16, 2023
Blinken, Lavrov meet briefly as US-Russia tensions soar

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have spoken briefly at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations

ByMATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer

NEW DELHI — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries.

U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in New Delhi. The short encounter comes as relations between Washington and Moscow have plummeted while tensions over Russia’s war with Ukraine have soared.

A senior U.S. official said Blinken used the discussion to make three points to Lavrov: that the U.S. would support Ukraine in the conflict for as long as it takes to bring the war to an end, that Russia should reverse its decision to suspend participation in the New START nuclear treaty and that Moscow should release detained American Paul Whelan.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation, declined to characterize Lavrov’s response but said Blinken did not get the impression that there would be any change in Russia’s behavior in the near term.

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March 2, 2023
India urges G-20 ministers to look beyond East-West crisis

NEW DELHI — Top diplomats from the world’s major industrialized and developing nations on Thursday opened what are expected to be contentious talks dominated by Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s moves to boost its global influence.

Host India appealed for all members of the fractured Group of 20 to reach consensus on issues of deep concern to poorer countries even if the broader East-West split over Ukraine cannot be resolved.

In a video address to the assembled foreign ministers in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged them not to allow current tensions to destroy agreements that might be reached on food and energy security, climate change and the debt crisis.

“We are meeting at a time of deep global divisions,” Modi told the group, which included U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, whose discussions would naturally be “affected by the geopolitical tensions of the day.”

“We all have our positions and our perspectives on how these tensions should be resolved,” he said, adding that: “We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can.”

In a nod to fears that the increasingly bitter rift between the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other appears likely to widen further, Modi said that “multilateralism is in crisis today.”

He lamented that the two main goals of the post-World War II international order — preventing conflict and fostering cooperation — were elusive. “The experience of the last two years, financial crisis, pandemic, terrorism and wars clearly shows that global governance has failed in both its mandates,” he said.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar then addressed the group in person, telling them that they “must find common ground and provide direction.”

While they were all in the same room, there was no sign that Blinken would sit down with either his Russian or Chinese counterparts. Ahead of the meeting, Blinken said he had no plans to meet with them individually but expected to see them in group settings.

In addition to attending the G-20 and seeing Modi and Jaishankar individually on Thursday, Blinken’s official schedule had him meeting only the foreign ministers of Brazil, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.

As at most international events since last year, the split over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security will overshadow the proceedings. But as the conflict has dragged on over the past 12 months, the divide has grown and now threatens to become a principal irritant in U.S.-China ties that were already on the rocks for other reasons.

A Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine that has drawn praise from Russia but dismissals from the West has done nothing to improve matters as U.S. officials have repeatedly accused China in recent days of considering the provision of weapons to Russia for use in the war.

Blinken on Wednesday warned China against transferring lethal military equipment to Russia, saying there would be significant consequences for such actions. And, Blinken said that the Chinese plan rang hollow given its focus on “sovereignty” compared to its own recent actions.

“China can’t have it both ways,” Blinken told reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan before traveling to New Delhi. “It can’t be putting itself out as a force for peace in public, while in one way or another, it continues to fuel the flames of this fire that Vladimir Putin started.”

He also said there is “zero evidence” that Putin is genuinely prepared for diplomacy to end the war. “To the contrary, the evidence is all in the other direction,” he said.

In the meantime, Moscow has been unrelenting in pushing its view that the West, led by the U.S., is trying to destroy Russia.

Ahead of the meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. policies, saying that Lavrov and his delegation would use the G-20 to “focus on the attempts by the West to take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from its hands.”

The antagonism has left India in the unenviable position of trying to reconcile clearly irreconcilable differences.

The meeting is particularly crucial for India’s hopes to use its chairmanship of the group to leverage its position on the global stage and adopt a neutral stance on Ukraine in order to focus on issues of importance to developing nations like rising inflation, debt stress, health, climate change and food and energy security.

But just last week, India was forced to issue a chair’s summary at the conclusion of the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting after Russia and China objected to a joint communique that retained language on the war in Ukraine drawn directly from the declaration from last year’s G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

India hopes to avert a repeat of that, but prospects appear dim. U.S. officials said discussions were ongoing about language that could be used in a final statement but could not predict if they would succeed.

So far, though, India has refrained from directly criticizing Russia, its major Cold War-era ally, while increasing imports of Russian oil, even as it has increasingly faced pressure to take a firm stand on Moscow. India has also abstained from voting in U.N. resolutions that condemn the Ukraine invasion.

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March 1, 2023