Lula da Silva using hosting duties to promote issues like fighting hunger, climate change and taxing super-rich
\n RIO DE JANEIRO
\nG20 leaders began arriving for a summit in Brazil on Monday to try reignite deadlocked climate talks and overcome their differences on the Middle East and Ukraine wars ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House.
\nUS President Joe Biden will attend his last summit of the world\u2019s leading economies, but as a lame duck leader eclipsed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the most influential leader at this year\u2019s meeting.
\nBrazil\u2019s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is using his hosting duties to promote issues close to his heart, including fighting hunger and climate change and taxing the super-rich.
\nBut the wars which have bitterly divided G20 members are also set to feature prominently in the discussions.
\nA Brazilian foreign ministry source said Monday that some countries wanted to renegotiate a draft summit communique.
\n\u201cFor Brazil and other countries the text is already finalised, but some countries want to open up some points on wars and climate,\u201d he told AFP.
\nBiden\u2019s decision Sunday to allow Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to strike targets inside Russia \u2014 a major policy shift \u2014 could prompt European allies to also review their stance.
\nG20 leaders are also under pressure to try rescue UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which have stalled on the issue of greater climate finance for developing countries.
\nUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for G20 members, who account for 80% of global emissions, to show \u201cleadership\u201d to facilitate a deal.
\nSecurity is tight for the gathering, which comes days after a failed bomb attack on Brazil\u2019s Supreme Court in Brasilia by a suspected far-right extremist, who killed himself in the process.
\nThe get-together will cap a farewell diplomatic tour by Biden which took him to Lima for a meeting of Asia-Pacific trading partners, and then to the Amazon in the first such visit for a sitting US president.
\nBiden, who has looked to burnish his legacy as time runs down on his presidency, insisted in the Amazon that his climate record would survive another Trump mandate.
\nSpotlight on climate
\nAll eyes at the stalled COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan are on Rio to break an impasse over how to raise $1 trillion a year for developing countries to cope with global warming.
\nRich countries want fast-developing economies like China and Gulf states to also put their hands in their pockets.
\nThe meeting comes in a year marked by another grim litany of extreme weather events, including Brazil\u2019s worst wildfire season in over a decade, fuelled by a record drought blamed at least partly on climate change.
\nAt the last G20 in India, leaders called for a tripling of renewable energy sources by the end of the decade, but without explicitly calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels.
\nConspicuously absent from the summit is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court over the Ukraine war.
\nLula, 79, told Brazil\u2019s GloboNews channel on Sunday that he did not want the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to take the focus off global poverty.
\n\u201cBecause if not, we will not discuss other things which are more important for people that are not at war, who are poor people and invisible to the world,\u201d he said.
\nTaxing billionaires
\nThe summit opens on Monday with Lula, a former steelworker who grew up in poverty, launching a \u201cGlobal Alliance against Hunger and Poverty.\u201d
\nBrazil is also pushing for higher taxes on billionaires.
\nLula had faced resistance to parts of his agenda from Argentinian President Javier Milei, a libertarian Trump uber-fan who met the Republican last week at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
\nThe head of the Argentine delegation, Federico Pinedo, told AFP that Buenos Aires has raised some objections and would not \u201cnecessarily\u201d sign the text, however. He did not elaborate.
\nBut the Brazilian foreign ministry source on Monday downplayed the likelihood of Argentina blocking a consensus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lula da Silva using hosting duties to promote issues like fighting hunger, climate change and taxing super-rich RIO DE JANEIRO G20 leaders began arriving for a summit in Brazil on Monday to try reignite deadlocked climate talks and overcome their differences on the Middle East and Ukraine wars ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s return to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-444332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n