G20 Sherpas make last-ditch attempt to reach consensus on summit declaration

Russia and the West are at loggerheads over the proposed Delhi Declaration's condemnation of Moscow's war in Ukraine. India, which holds the G20 Presidency, will have to issue a chair’s summary if the summit ends without consensus on September 10.

With just five days left before world leaders gather for the G20 Summit in New Delhi, G20 Sherpas will go into a huddle from Monday to make a last-ditch attempt to reach a consensus over the proposed “Delhi Declaration” to be adopted at the summit.

The G20 Sherpas arrived at a resort in Haryana's Nuh on Sunday for their last meeting before the leaders meet, even as Moscow vowed to block the adoption of the joint declaration at the summit if it contained any criticism of Russia for its ‘special military operations’ in Ukraine. The West, led by the United States, on the other hand, made it clear that the G20 must put on record the international community's condemnation of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.

The G20 Sherpas will continue their negotiations till come Wednesday, not only to iron out differences over the two paragraphs of the proposed "Delhi Declaration" on geopolitical issues, but also on other issues - including: debt-restructuring to help vulnerable nations in the ‘Global South’; transitioning from fossil fuel to green energy; and aid to tackle climate change, whereby developed nations assist developing countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host the 18th G20 summit at the ‘Bharat Mandapam’ in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. Though President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and likely, President Xi Jinping of China, are not coming to New Delhi, leaders of the majority of the 15 other nations and the European Union are expected to attend the summit in person. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Premier Li Qiang will lead the delegations from Moscow and Beijing respectively.

Lavrov recently said that Moscow would block the adoption of the ‘Delhi Declaration’ if it failed to reflect Russia’s position on the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a 'special military operation'. Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi, Denis Alipov, also said recently that the G20 was a forum to discuss international economic cooperation and not geopolitical issues, like the one related to Ukraine. He also said that the G20 summit declaration should not have any content that was not based on consensus.

The West, led by the US, however, has been insisting that the declaration proposed to be adopted at the end of the summit in New Delhi must have a paragraph noting that most of the G20 members strongly condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine and stress that the conflict was causing “immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks”. Russia rejected the inclusion of the paragraph, arguing that it did not conform to the G20 mandate.

The paragraph had been a part of the ‘Bali Declaration’, which had been adopted after much wrangling at the end of the 17th G20 Summit held in Indonesia in November of 2022. The Bali Declaration, however, had also taken note of the “other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions”.

India’s G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant, has been coordinating with his counterparts in other nations to prepare a draft of the proposed ‘Delhi Declaration’, which take into account the discussions that took place during the run-up to the summit. They will now try to reach a consensus and finalise the draft. What has made the process challenging is that every G20 member can exercise a veto to block the adoption of the declaration, a source in New Delhi said. India, which holds the G20 Presidency, will have to issue a chair’s summary if the summit ends without consensus on September 10. The chair’s summary, unlike a declaration adopted through consensus, will not be binding on the G20 nations, explained the source.