Japan said on Friday that the position of the G7 nations on the war in Ukraine would remain the same and it was up to India’s G20 presidency to reach consensus on text referring to the crisis in a leaders’ statement to be adopted at the conference upcoming group summit.
India, the current president of the G20, faces an uphill task in building consensus on the issue given the sharp differences between the West and Russia and China.
Yukiko Okano, deputy press secretary for Japan’s foreign ministry, told reporters in New Delhi that the Ukraine crisis figured in talks between Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on Thursday night.
Okano, who is accompanying Hayashi on his two-day visit to India, told a press briefing that the G7’s stance on Ukraine would not change.
Okano said “I think our position will remain the same as that of the G7 countries, no matter in which forum we express our concerns and objections regarding Ukraine, As far as the joint communique is concerned, it’s really up to the presidency to reach a consensus. So I’d rather not comment on the way forward. That’s in the hands of the Indian presidency”.
She was responding to a question about the lack of consensus on the text of the joint communique and whether the G7 would reconsider its position on the contentious issue to pave the way for the finalization of the leaders’ statement at the G20 summit in New Delhi.
G7 summit was held in May in Hiroshima under the Japanese presidency
At the summit, G7 leaders decided to oppose Russia’s “illegal, unjustified and unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine and introduced new sanctions against Moscow.The draft G20 communique, two paragraphs on the Ukraine conflict were taken from the declaration of the G20 “leaders” from Bali, which was revealed in November last year.
Both Russia and China agreed to two paragraphs on the Ukraine conflict in the Bali Declaration but backed out this year, making it difficult for India to build consensus on the tricky issue.
The G20 group operates on the principle of consensus
Almost all the key meetings held under India’s G20 presidency, including the finance and foreign ministers’ meetings, could not come up with consensus documents in view of Russia and China’s opposition to any text referring to the Ukraine conflict. However, Indian negotiators are confident of finding a consensus on the Ukraine-related text for the leaders’ statement.
Asked about discussions between Hayashi and Jaishankar on the Ukraine conflict, Okano declined to provide details. She noted that the two countries share a “basic mindset” that sovereignty and territorial integrity should be protected in accordance with the UN Charter and that the use of force to change the status quo is not acceptable.
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