Gaza, Ukraine loom large as G20 foreign ministers meet

AFP
February 20, 2024

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gestures on arrival at Brasilia Air Base on February 20, 2024, after landing for a three-day visit to the country 

- Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA

Joshua Howat BERGER, Louis GENOT

G20 foreign ministers open a two-day meeting Wednesday in Brazil, with the outlook bleak for progress on a thorny agenda of conflicts and crises, from the Gaza and Ukraine wars to growing polarization.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are both expected in Rio de Janeiro for the first high-level G20 meeting of the year — though not China’s Wang Yi.

In a world torn by conflicts and divisions, Brazil, which took over the rotating G20 presidency from India in December, has voiced hopes for what President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls “the forum with the greatest capacity to positively influence the international agenda.”

But Lula’s bid to make the G20 a space for finding common ground suffered Sunday when the veteran leftist ignited a diplomatic firestorm by accusing Israel of “genocide,” comparing its military campaign in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust.

The comments drew outrage in Israel, which declared him “persona non grata,” and could overshadow any bid to de-escalate the conflict via the G20.

“If Lula imagined he was going to propose peace resolutions on Israel or Ukraine, that just got swept off the table,” international relations specialist Igor Lucena told AFP.

More than four months after the Gaza war started with Hamas fighters’ unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which has vowed to wipe out the Islamist group in retaliation, there is little sign of progress toward peace.

A new UN Security Council resolution on a ceasefire was vetoed Tuesday by the United States, which said the text would endanger ongoing negotiations, including on the release of Hamas-held hostages.

The outlook is similarly downbeat on Russia’s war in Ukraine, which also has G20 members divided.

Despite a push from Western countries for the group to condemn President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the G20’s last summit, held in New Delhi in September, ended with a watered-down statement that denounced the use of force but did not explicitly name Russia, which maintains friendly ties with fellow members like India and Brazil.

Underlining the G20 stalemate, the G7 group of top economies — Ukrainian allies Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — will hold its own virtual meeting on the war Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

– ‘Putting out fires’ –

Held at a marina on the Rio waterfront, the G20 meeting will open with a session on “addressing international tensions.”

The ministers will discuss global governance reform Thursday — a favorite issue for Brazil, which wants a greater voice for the global south at institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank.

“The number and gravity of conflicts has returned to the level of the Cold War. That brings new urgency to the issue,” said Brazil’s top diplomat for G20 political negotiations, Mauricio Lyrio.

“We need to adapt the international system to prevent new conflicts,” he told journalists Tuesday. “Now, we’re just putting out fires.”

Brazil also wants to use its G20 presidency to push the fights against poverty and climate change.

There will also be space for bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the gathering — though a Blinken-Lavrov encounter looks unlikely, given the exploding tension over Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death in prison Friday.

Blinken and Lavrov last met in person at a G20 gathering in India in March 2023.

– Election-year havoc –

Founded in 1999, the Group of 20 brings together most of the world’s biggest economies.

Originally an economic forum, it has grown increasingly involved in international politics.

But the prospects for major advances via the group are dim in a year when elections will be held in some 50 countries, including key G20 members such as the United States and Russia, said Lucena.

“Reaching big agreements will be difficult,” he said.

“It’s not a favorable environment for resolving conflicts. On the contrary.”

A Brazilian government source said that after recent G20 struggles for consensus, the hosts axed the requirement that every meeting produce a joint statement — with the exception of the annual leaders’ summit, scheduled for November in Rio.

burs-jhb/bgs

Israel-Hamas War Splits G-20, Risking Paralysis at Meeting

Michael Nienaber, Samy Adghirni and Simone Iglesias
Tue, February 20, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- The Group of 20 nations is so split on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine that they may be forced to reduce the forum’s scope and avoid geopolitical issues altogether this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

Removing all sensitive political topics from G-20 statements would diminish the relevance of the format, said one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But that would give the group the chance on reaching consensus on other issues.

G-20 foreign ministers will meet in Rio de Janeiro starting Wednesday, when the group is expected to discuss the conflict in the Middle East. Complicating the upcoming gathering is the fact that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over the weekend compared Israel’s war on Hamas with Adolf Hitler’s extermination of Jews during the Holocaust.

Lula is setting the tone for developing nations since Brazil holds the rotating presidency of the G-20. Several Latin American countries have pulled their ambassadors from Israel, while South Africa has filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide.

The Group of Seven represents the US and its main allies while the G-20 brings together countries from across the spectrum, including China, and so it becomes a focus for global disputes. Israel is not a member of the G-20.

In the run-up to the meeting of foreign ministers — as well as a gathering of the finance ministers next week — officials representing developing nations including South Africa and Brazil have said they want their position that Israel is committing genocide reflected in any joint G-20 statement, according to the people.

That wording has been rejected by several other G-20 nations including the US and Germany, the people said.

Brazil has explored strategies to keep the wars from overshadowing the rest of the agenda. These include potentially issuing a single statement at the end of Brazil’s presidency in November, rather than after each ministerial meeting, according to the people.

Some members representing the developing nations have argued that the G-20 should drop any references to geopolitical conflicts, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, since an agreement on those issues is seen as impossible, said the people. The upshot could be that any future G-20 statement will be shorter and less political.

Mauricio Carvalho Lyrio, the secretary for economic and financial affairs at Brazil’s foreign affairs ministry, told reporters on Tuesday that ministers participating in Rio’s meetings would issue a report rather than a statement.

“A declaration can’t be an end in itself,” he said. “There is an obsession to make statements, but sometimes they prevent progress in the discussions.”

Economic Focus

It also means that the G-20 format would re-focus on its initial aim of fostering economic cooperation and strengthening fiscal resilience to prevent a repeat of a global financial crisis, according to the people.

Still, Carvalho Lyrio insisted that geopolitics and crises would still be the main topic of discussion of Rio’s closed-meetings. Ministers will also focus on global governance reform, he said, which includes revamping institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and United Nations Security Council and is a key area of concern for host Brazil.

During a meeting in Morocco in October only a few days after Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel, G-20 finance chiefs agreed on a communique that didn’t mention the conflict, underlining the forum’s struggle to address conflicts seen as threats to the global economy.

This followed a G-20 summit in India in September where leaders — after days of wrangling — managed to agree on compromise language on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that won praise from the US and its allies but drew criticism from Kyiv.

Israel insists Hamas needs to be destroyed following the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israeli communities, which killed 1,200 people. More than 29,000 have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its retaliatory offensive, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the US, European Union and others.

--With assistance from Arne Delfs, Ramsey Al-Rikabi, Sylvia Westall and Andrew Rosati.

 Bloomberg Businessweek