São Paulo/Brasilia/Tokyo: With countries deeply divided over Israel's attack on Gaza, financial officials from the Group of 20 will weigh geopolitics when they meet in São Paulo, Brazil, this week. He plans to put aside his concerns and focus on global economic issues.
Brazil, wanting to ensure a productive meeting that brings agreement on key economic priorities, proposed a much shorter closing statement than seen in recent years. The move is already being negotiated with other member states, a Brazilian government official said. draft.
This South American country is the current G20 Presidency.
The final draft, which is still in its final stages, refers to global division and the risk of conflict in general terms, but omits direct references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or the Israel-Gaza war. said the people.
Finance officials and central bankers from the United States, China, Russia and other world's biggest economies gathered in São Paulo to discuss a world amid slowing growth, record debt burdens and concerns that inflation is yet to come. Consider economic trends. It keeps interest rates high.
The International Monetary Fund said last month that a “soft landing” in which inflation falls without triggering a painful global recession is increasingly likely, but overall growth and global trade remain below historical averages. I warned you that
Russia's invasion of Ukraine almost exactly two years ago threw the G20 into turmoil, exposing long-simmering fault lines within the group and hampering G20 officials' efforts to reach agreement in a final statement, or communiqué, after the meeting. .
India and Indonesia, which preceded Brazil in the G20 Presidency, opted for a Chairman's Statement summarizing areas of agreement and mentioning their dissent, namely Russia, given their bitter divisions over the four-month long Gaza war. Even that can be difficult. The war erupted in October when ministers last met in Marrakech, Morocco, intensifying rifts between the United States and its Western allies and non-Western members of the Group of 20.
Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa have been outspoken about Israel's relentless attacks on Gaza since the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that killed about 1,200 people and took 253 hostages, a G7 official said. has been criticized. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 29,000 Palestinians were killed in the reprisal attacks.
Meanwhile, the United States last week vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, blocking calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and instead linking it to the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas. He promoted a temporary ceasefire.
Deep disagreements over Gaza necessitated a different approach this year, a Brazilian official said, adding: “If this topic is included, there will be no agreement.”
To prevent disagreements over Gaza from derailing progress on economic issues, Brazil proposed a short statement that did not specifically mention either war. According to G7 officials, the United States objected to the language calling for Israel to be held accountable, which South Africa and other countries had argued was necessary if the statement referred to and condemned Russia's war against Ukraine.
Brazil wants this week's discussions to focus on reducing inequality, international tax reform, addressing the sovereign debt crisis and working towards sustainable development. Multilateral banking and climate finance reform will feature more prominently at the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings in Washington in April, Brazilian sources said.
Mark Sobel, US chair of the Government Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), said removing geopolitics from the communique makes sense for an organization that has historically focused on economic and financial issues.
“Certainly, this reflects capriciousness, but it also reflects a broader mentality among finance ministers and central bankers to focus on economic and financial issues in a technical way,” he said. Stated.
One G7 official said the statement was likely to be “brief, vague and refer only to non-controversial issues.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will emphasize cooperative efforts to address global challenges such as sovereign debt and the COVID-19 pandemic, and emphasize the importance of the G20 institutions, a senior U.S. official said.
Yellen is scheduled to meet with Brazil's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad to celebrate the 200th anniversary of U.S.-Brazil relations, but Brazilian officials said the event will not accept Brazil's “divisive approach and The event was designed to highlight “the interest in focusing on the
One outstanding question is how persuasive the United States, Japan and Canada will be in demanding that their communiqués address the economic consequences of geopolitical conflicts, the first Brazilian official said. Ta.
But the G20 foreign ministers' failure to raise the issue sent a strong signal, the official said.
“The outcome of the Sherpa meeting reinforces our understanding that (geopolitical) topics should not be included in communiqués.”
Eric Perofsky, a former senior U.S. official now at the Rockefeller Foundation, said there is value in meeting in a G20-like structure despite the clear differences.
“Even if a conversation doesn't succeed, it's still a conversation. Maybe that means at the end of the day someone drinks a cup of coffee they weren't supposed to have and finds common ground they didn't know existed. maybe. ”
(issued February 26, 2024, 11:30 IST)
