JOHANNESBURG
\nSouth Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa opened on Thursday a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting with a call for \u201ccooperation\u201d amid geopolitical tensions and \u201crising intolerance.\u201d
\nTop diplomats from the world\u2019s 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.
\n\u201cIt 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,\u201d Ramaphosa said.
\n\u201cGeopolitical tensions, rising intolerance, conflict and war, climate change, pandemics and energy and food insecurity threaten an already fragile global coexistence,\u201d Ramaphosa said.
\nThe G20, a grouping of 19 countries as well as the European Union and the African Union, is deeply divided on key issues from Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine to climate change.
\nWorld leaders have also been split on how to respond to the dramatic policy shifts from Washington since the return of US President Donald Trump.
\n\u201cAs the G20 we must continue to advocate for diplomatic solutions to conflicts,\u201d Ramaphosa said.
\n\u201cI think it is important that we should remember that cooperation is our greatest strength,\u201d he added. \u201cLet us seek to find common ground through constructive engagement.\u201d
\nA 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\u2019s Jean-Noel Barrot and Britain\u2019s David Lammy.
\nBut the group\u2019s 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.
\nPretoria has in particular come under fire from Washington for leading a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of \u201cgenocidal\u201d acts in its Gaza offensive, which Israel has denied.
\nUS 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.
\nThe first G20 presidency by an African nation was an opportunity for the continent to be \u201cheard on critical global issues, like sustainable development, the digital economy and the shift toward green energy,\u201d Ramaphosa said.
\nSouth Africa\u2019s priorities for its presidency of the powerful grouping included finding ways to scale up resilience to climate disasters and improving \u201cdebt sustainability\u201d for developing countries.
\nIt also wanted to mobilize finance for a \u201cjust energy transition\u201d in which countries most responsible for climate change support those least responsible, he said.
\n\u201cG20 leaders should secure agreement on increasing the quality and quantity of climate finance flows to developing economy countries.\u201d
\nSouth Africa would also champion the harnessing of critical minerals for \u201cgreen industrialization.\u201d
\nHowever, in a sign of the tensions in the grouping, the planned group photograph was canceled as \u201cseveral countries did not wish to appear next to Lavrov,\u201d members of a delegation told AFP.
\nSouth Africa\u2019s agenda for its presidency might be \u201cderailed\u201d by heightened geopolitical tensions, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, Priyal Singh, told AFP ahead of the meeting.
\n\u201cThe elephant in the room is the geopolitical context in which this meeting is taking place,\u201d Singh said.
\nRubio\u2019s absence will \u201cdistract the focus of the meeting,\u201d warned William Gumede, professor of public management at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
\n\u201cIt sends a symbolic message to Africans: the US is not taking Africa seriously,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHANNESBURG South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa opened on Thursday a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting with a call for \u201ccooperation\u201d amid geopolitical tensions and \u201crising intolerance.\u201d Top diplomats from the world\u2019s largest economies gathered in Johannesburg for the two-day talks held for the first time in Africa, overshadowed by the absence of US Secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n