New Delhi: Two documents related to sustainable development were hailed by the external affairs minister as the “biggest achievement” of India’s presidency of G-20 till now, even as development ministers from the 20 nations meeting in Varanasi were once again unable to reach a consensus on the Ukraine war.At the conclusion of the G-20 development ministers meeting, India released an Outcome document with Chair’s summary, an Action Plan for accelerating progress on Sustainable Development Goals and High-Level Principles on Lifestyles for Sustainable Development.Referring to the last two documents, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that these outcomes had found “unanimous support”. “This is central to all development and, frankly, the biggest achievement of our presidency so far. When the countries of the Global South read this document, they will say India heard us,’’ he told reporters in Varanasi on Monday.According to the meeting’s outcome document, the G-20 development ministers reached a consensus on its 14 points, with the exception of two paragraphs related to Russia’s Ukraine invasion.The two paragraphs had text that was identical to what had been included in the G-20 foreign ministers’ outcome document released in March. In that meeting, Russia and China had both disassociated only from the text that was similar to that used at the G-20 Bali Declaration.That Outcome Document had the following single footnote – “Paragraphs 3 and 4 of this document, as taken from the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration (15-16 November 2022), were agreed to by all member countries except Russia and China”.This time however, Russia and China seem to have escalated their objection to the text. The document released in Varanasi had three separate reference to the lack of consensus.The document began with a sentence that “All G20 Development Ministers agreed to paragraphs 1 to 9 and paragraphs 12 to 14” – an allusion to the elusive consensus.Thereafter, a footnote on the first page, tagged to the title of the document, noted, “Russia dissociated itself from the status of the document as a common outcome because of references to para 10 and 11, which referred to the Russia-Ukraine conflict”.On the specific paragraphs 10 and 11, another annotation was made that “China stated that the meeting outcome should not include any reference to the Ukraine crisis”.When asked to comment on the remarks made by the Russian delegation during the meeting, Jaishankar responded by stating that each delegation voiced their own interests and perspectives.“Some countries may be closer to others, but I would not get into this ‘who supported whom and who did not support’. I don’t think that is helpful. I think the fairest description is ‘everybody spoke for themselves’,” he said.The Indian minister added, “And my job as chair was to find the common elements and put it together and that is the document that is there before you”.He further claimed that the Varanasi meeting had steered the narrative away from the Ukraine conflict and towards the economic challenges faced by developing countries.“It was understandable last year that the focus was on more immediate issues pertaining to the conflict. But slowly a narrative started to build that it should not shift focus from away what are the pain points of the Global South, like food and fuel shortages. We are in no way diminishing the consequences of the conflict, but the conflict was dealt with through an agreed understanding in Bali (G20 summit last year) at the level of the leaders,’’ he said.
