NEW DELHI: It is difficult to predict if leaders of the G20 grouping gathering for a summit in New Delhi this weekend can reach consensus on a declaration, European Council President Charles Michel said on Friday.
Analysts say deeper and more entrenched divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine risk derailing progress on issues such as food security, debt distress and global cooperation on climate change when the world’s most powerful nations meet.
“It’s difficult to predict if it will be possible to have an agreement on the declaration,” Michel told a press conference in the Indian capital. “We are still negotiating.”
He added, “I don’t intend to say something that will make the efforts more difficult. We support the efforts made by the Indian presidency.”
India, which is chairing the grouping, wants the summit’s final communique to also accommodate the views of Russia and China, which have blocked Western nations’ efforts to include strong condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping is attending the summit, with Moscow sending instead Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while Premier Li Qiang will represent Beijing.
Michel said the European Union wanted the G20 to focus on tackling global challenges to food and energy security, saying Russia was blocking Ukraine’s exports of grain through the Black Sea, one of the key issues to feature in the weekend’s talks.
“The EU will continue to strongly back Ukraine and pile pressure on Russia,” he said, adding that it was crystal clear that the bloc condemned the Russian aggression.
“By deliberately attacking Ukraine’s ports, the Kremlin is depriving people of food they desperately need.”
Russia withdrew from the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal in July, citing a lack of progress on its own food and fertilizer exports.
Michel did not foresee the summit solving all “major” global problems, he said, but added that the EU wanted the bloc to hasten efforts on sustainable development, climate change and poverty reduction.
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EU’s Michel says it is hard to predict if G20 can agree on summit declaration
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EU’s Michel says it is hard to predict if G20 can agree on summit declaration
- Michel did not foresee the summit solving all “major” global problems
Louvre heist probe still aims to ‘recover jewelry’, top prosecutor says
- Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery
PARIS: French investigators remain determined to find the imperial jewels stolen from the Louvre in October, a prosecutor has said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
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