JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa opened on Thursday a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting with a call for “cooperation” amid geopolitical tensions and “rising intolerance.”
Top diplomats from the world’s largest economies gathered in Johannesburg for the two-day talks held for the first time in Africa, overshadowed by the absence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“It is critical that the principles of the UN Charter, multilateralism and international law should remain at the center of all our endeavours. It should be the glue that keeps us together,” Ramaphosa said.
“Geopolitical tensions, rising intolerance, conflict and war, climate change, pandemics and energy and food insecurity threaten an already fragile global coexistence,” Ramaphosa said.
The G20, a grouping of 19 countries as well as the European Union and the African Union, is deeply divided on key issues from Russia’s war in Ukraine to climate change.
World leaders have also been split on how to respond to the dramatic policy shifts from Washington since the return of US President Donald Trump.
“As the G20 we must continue to advocate for diplomatic solutions to conflicts,” Ramaphosa said.
“I think it is important that we should remember that cooperation is our greatest strength,” he added. “Let us seek to find common ground through constructive engagement.”
A curtain-raiser to the G20 summit in November, the meeting was attended by top diplomats including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, his Chinese and Indian counterparts as well as European envoys like France’s Jean-Noel Barrot and Britain’s David Lammy.
But the group’s richest member, the United States, was only represented by Dana Brown, the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Pretoria, after Rubio skipped the meeting amid disputes with the host nation over several policy issues.
Pretoria has in particular come under fire from Washington for leading a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of “genocidal” acts in its Gaza offensive, which Israel has denied.
US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent announced on Thursday that he would also not attend the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Cape Town next week.
The first G20 presidency by an African nation was an opportunity for the continent to be “heard on critical global issues, like sustainable development, the digital economy and the shift toward green energy,” Ramaphosa said.
South Africa’s priorities for its presidency of the powerful grouping included finding ways to scale up resilience to climate disasters and improving “debt sustainability” for developing countries.
It also wanted to mobilize finance for a “just energy transition” in which countries most responsible for climate change support those least responsible, he said.
“G20 leaders should secure agreement on increasing the quality and quantity of climate finance flows to developing economy countries.”
South Africa would also champion the harnessing of critical minerals for “green industrialization.”
However, in a sign of the tensions in the grouping, the planned group photograph was canceled as “several countries did not wish to appear next to Lavrov,” members of a delegation told AFP.
South Africa’s agenda for its presidency might be “derailed” by heightened geopolitical tensions, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, Priyal Singh, told AFP ahead of the meeting.
“The elephant in the room is the geopolitical context in which this meeting is taking place,” Singh said.
Rubio’s absence will “distract the focus of the meeting,” warned William Gumede, professor of public management at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
“It sends a symbolic message to Africans: the US is not taking Africa seriously,” he said.
Africa’s first G20 meeting opens with call for ‘cooperation’
https://arab.news/rmu3p
Africa’s first G20 meeting opens with call for ‘cooperation’
- “It is critical that the principles of the UN Charter, multilateralism and international law should remain at the center of all our endeavours,” Ramaphosa said
- “Geopolitical tensions, rising intolerance, conflict and war, climate change, pandemics and energy and food insecurity threaten an already fragile global coexistence“
US, Ukraine officials say they’ll meet for 3rd day after progress on creating a security framework
- Witkoff and Kushner’s talks in Florida with Umerov, Ukraine’s lead negotiator, and Hnatov follow discussions between President Vladimir Putin and the US envoys at the Kremlin on Tuesday
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s advisers and Ukrainian officials say they’ll meet for a third day of talks on Saturday after making progress on finding agreement on a security framework for postwar Ukraine.
The two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace.”
The statement from US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad brushstrokes about the progress they say has been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a US-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of war.
“Both parties agreed that real progress toward any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps toward de-escalation and cessation of killings,” the statement said. “Parties also separately reviewed the future prosperity agenda which aims to support Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, joint US–Ukraine economic initiatives, and long-term recovery projects.”
The US and Ukrainian officials also discussed “deterrence capabilities” that Ukraine will need “to sustain a lasting peace.”
Witkoff and Kushner’s talks in Florida with Umerov, Ukraine’s lead negotiator, and Hnatov follow discussions between President Vladimir Putin and the US envoys at the Kremlin on Tuesday.
Friday’s session took place at the the Shell Bay Club in Hallandale Beach, a high-end private golf and lifestyle destination owned by Witkoff’s real estate development company.
Previous diplomatic attempts to break the deadlock have come to nothing and the war has continued unabated. Officials largely have kept a lid on how the latest talks are going, though Trump’s initial 28-point plan was leaked.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s delegation in Florida wanted to hear from the US side about the talks at the Kremlin.
Zelensky, as well as European leaders backing him, have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling in peace talks while the Russian army tries to press forward with its invasion. Zelensky said in a video address late Thursday that officials wanted to know “what other pretexts Putin has come up with to drag out the war and to pressure Ukraine.”
Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Friday, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov praised Kushner as potentially playing an important role in ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ushakov also took part in Tuesday’s talks at the Kremlin.
“If any plan leading to a settlement is put on paper, it will be the pen of Mr. Kushner that will lead the way,” Ushakov said.
The flattering comments about Kushner by the senior Russian official come as Putin has sought to sow division between Trump and Ukraine and Europe at a moment when Trump’s impatience with the conflict is mounting. Putin said his five-hour talks this week with Witkoff and Kushner were “necessary” and “useful,” but some proposals were unacceptable.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was a senior adviser to Trump during his first term and was the president’s point person on developing the Abraham Accords, which formalized commercial and diplomatic ties between Israel and a trio of Arab nations.
Kushner has played a more informal role in Trump’s second go-around, but he helped Witkoff close out ceasefire and hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas this fall. Trump tapped Kushner again to pair up with Witkoff to try to find an endgame to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European take on the peace talks
Ushakov, who accompanied Putin on a visit to India on Friday, repeated the Russian president’s recent criticism of Europe’s stance on the peace talks. Kyiv’s European allies are concerned about possible Russian aggression beyond Ukraine and want a prospective peace deal to include strong security guarantees.
Kyiv’s allies in Europe are “constantly putting forward demands that are unacceptable to Moscow,” Ushakov told Russia’s state-owned Zvezda TV. “Putting it mildly, the Europeans don’t help Washington and Moscow reach a settlement on the Ukrainian issues.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that he made progress during a visit to Beijing on getting Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s support for peace efforts.
“We exchanged deeply and truthfully on all points, and I saw a willingness from the (Chinese) president to contribute to stability and peace,” Macron said.
The French president said he stressed that Ukraine needs guarantees that Russia won’t attack it again if a settlement is reached and that Europe must have a voice in negotiations.
“The unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential. And I say it, repeat it, emphasize it. We need to work together,” Macron said.
The latest drone attacks
Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery.
The Russian attack on Thursday night in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region destroyed the house where the boy was killed and also two women were injured, according to the head of the regional military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 137 drones of various types during the night.
Ukrainian drones attacked a port and an oil refinery inside Russia overnight as part of Kyiv’s campaign to disrupt Russian logistics, Ukraine’s general staff said.
The drones struck Temriuk sea port in Russia’s Krasnodar region and the Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region, starting blazes, a statement said. Syzran is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of the border with Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said only that its air defenses intercepted 85 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
