New YORK: India’s G20 Presidency was “challenging” as it came amid “a very sharp” East-West polarisation and “very deep” North-South divide, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said.
The remarks by Jaishankar came at a special India-UN for Global South: Delivering for Development’ side event he hosted here on Saturday on the margins of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly.
“We meet just a few weeks after the New Delhi G20 Summit, a summit which took place on the theme of One Earth, One Family, One Future’. Now, it was a challenging summit. It was actually a challenging presidency,” he said
The event saw participation from dignitaries at the UN as well as Foreign Ministers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Small Island States.
“It was challenging because we were confronting a very sharp East-West polarisation as well as a very deep North-South divide. But we were very determined as the presidency of the G20 to make sure that this organisation on which the world really had put so much hope,” was able to get back to its core agenda of global growth and development.
“We do believe that the New Delhi Summit of the G20 has in many ways laid the foundation for the international community really to look at its development prospects, hopefully with greater optimism, certainly, in our expectation, with more resources and that the decade ahead would allow us really to overcome the challenges that we have all experienced over the last few years,” he said.
He emphasised that while India has a few more months of its G20 Presidency left, “both before the G20 presidency and certainly after it, we will remain very much a partner, a contributor, a collaborator, in our own way perhaps an inspiration to others, on how to address developmental challenges.
“Our experiences and our achievements we place before you in a spirit of sharing.”
He said that when it has come to South-South cooperation, “we have endeavoured to walk the talk.”