S. Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs for India, highlighted the difficulties encountered during the country’s G20 presidency on Saturday. He said that New Delhi effectively overcame the North-South and East-West divides to bring the G20 back to its fundamental goals of growth and development.
Speaking here on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Jaishankar said, “It was a challenging summit and it was a challenging president because we were confronting a very sharp East-West polarisation and a very deep North-South divide. But we were very determined as the presidency of G20 to make sure this organization, on which the world had put so much hope, and that it was able to bring back to its core agenda of global growth and development.
The G20 meeting in New Delhi, according to Jaishankar, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, established the groundwork for the international community to, hopefully, see its growth possibilities with more optimism.
The first day of the weekend G20 conference in New Delhi saw the adoption of the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration. The agreement was reached despite a sharp rift over the conflict in Ukraine; before, Western countries had pushed for a harsh denunciation of Russia in the Leaders’ Declaration, while others had pushed for a focus on more general economic matters. To get agreement on the Ukraine crisis, 200 hours of discussions, 300 bilateral sessions, and 15 drafts were required. India’s attempt to oversee a common proclamation was afterwards praised by a number of nations.
After his speech, Jaishankar participated in a Q&A session and said that many “people were surprised” that India “actually got everybody together.” “I don’t believe they really anticipated that. There would thus be a certain group of individuals who are still perplexed as to how it occurred, he was quoted as saying by ANI.
“The other part, which I believe includes some of the people present right now, has appreciated that we were able to convince the G20 to place a special emphasis on the Global South and to return to their original mission of promoting global growth and development. We partially achieved that by planning a summit of the Global South in advance, he said.
