Johannesburg: The Group of 20 nations will make a joint declaration at the end of their summit in Johannesburg this weekend despite warnings against that from the United States, South Africa’s president said Thursday.
He said the summit host country will “not be bullied” by pressure from the Trump administration to water down any final decisions.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters that the first G20 summit in Africa was moving forward without the US, which is boycotting the two-day meeting of world leaders that opens Saturday over Trump’s claims that Ramaphosa’s government is violently persecuting a white minority. A South African G20 ambassador said this week that the US had sent diplomatic communication to South Africa advising that that “there should be no declaration adopted” at the summit because the US was not there and therefore there would be no consensus. Instead, the US wants a toned-down statement from South Africa only to cap the summit, which is a culmination of more than 120 meetings that Africa’s most advanced economy has hosted since it took over the G20’s rotating presidency for this year.
“We will have a declaration,” Ramaphosa told reporters Thursday, pushing back against the US “The talks are going extremely well. I’m confident we are moving towards a declaration, and they are now just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.” “Without the United States, the whole process of the G20 is moving forward. We will not be bullied. We will not agree to be bullied.”