G20: Russia, Brazil praise outcome of Delhi summit

Biden said on Sunday that he spoke with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit.

This the highest-level meeting between US and Chinese officials in nearly 10 months, since Biden spoke with President Xi Jinping at last year's G20 in Indonesia.

"My team, my staff still meets with President Xi's people and his cabinet," Biden told reporters. "I met with his No.2 person in India today."

"We talked about stability," he said, adding that they discussed developments in the Southern Hemisphere. "It wasn't confrontational at all."

Biden said that China's economy was in "crisis."

"One of the major economic tenets of [Xi's] plan isn't working at all right now," he Biden said. "I'm not happy for that, but it's not working."

The US president said he believed that China's economic troubles were unlikely to spark an invasion of Taiwan.

"I don't think this is going to cause China to invade Taiwan," he said. "As a matter of fact, the opposite, probably doesn't have the same capacity that it had before."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for Moscow not to be excluded from any initiative seeking to revive a deal allowing the safe export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea.

"No process that marginalizes Russia on the Black Sea grain initiative will be viable," Erdogan told reporters after the close of the G20 summit in New Delhi.

Erdogan announced a forthcoming meeting on the issue between Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations, without specifying a precise date or location, saying prospects of reviving the deal were not "hopeless."

Russia withdrew from the deal, which was brokered by Turkey and the UN, in July, a year after it went into force, saying its own grain and fertilizer exports were still negatively impacted by Western sanctions in other sectors.

Since then, there has been a series of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's port infrastructure, with Kyiv decrying them as cynical attempts to damage its exports and undermine global food security.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has praised the G20 summit in New Delhi for avoiding negative references to his country over its invasion of Ukraine in a joint declaration.

"We were able to prevent the West's attempts to 'Ukrainize' the summit agenda," said Lavrov, who represented Moscow at the summit in the absence of President Vladimir Putin.

"The text doesn't mention Russia at all," he said.

That omission prompted Kyiv to say the G20 had "nothing to be proud of" regarding the declaration.

But Lavrov's opinion was apparently shared by others.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country will take the bloc's presidency in December, said "We cannot let geopolitical issues sequester the G20 agenda of discussions," adding:  "We have no interest in a divided G20. We need peace and cooperation instead of conflict."

Russia has been conducting a full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.

Lavrov's comments seem to indicate, however, that Moscow considers that its actions do not clash with the denunciation of the use of force for territorial gain contained in the joint statement.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he raised concerns about possible Chinese interference in the UK's parliamentary democracy during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in India.

Those concerns, prompted by the reported arrest of two alleged spies, are likely to undermine Britain's current bid to boost its dialogue with China.

Sunak, however, defended his government's efforts to engage more with Beijing, which included a visit to China last month by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

"If you look at how countries like America, Japan, Canada all engage with China, that's what they do, because engaging with people allows you to raise concerns directly," he said.

"I think that's a more powerful thing to do."

The Sunday Times newspaper has reported that one of the people detained on suspicion of spying for Beijing is a researcher in the British Parliament.

If that is confirmed, it would represent one of the most serious security breaches involving a hostile state at the parliament.

A Chinese report on the meeting between the two leaders did not mention the spying allegations, only citing Li as saying that "the two sides should properly handle their differences."

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be arrested if he attends the G20 summit in Rio de Janerio next year, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. 

The statement comes after Putin skipped the G20 sunmmit in New Delhi, India, this weekend, possibly to avoid the risk of criminal detention. Instead, he was represented by his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), in March 2023, issued an arrest warrant against Putin for his role in war crimes against Ukraine. While India is not a member of the ICC and has not officially condemned Russia over the invasion, the risk remained.

Brazil, on the other hand, is an ICC member.

"We enjoy peace and we like to treat people well. So I believe Putin can go easily to Brazil," Lula said in an interview to Indian news network Firstpost. 

"If I'm the president of Brazil and if he comes to Brazil, there's no way that he will be arrested." 

On Sunday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the ceremonial gavel to Lula, closing the 2023 G20 summit. 

"I want to congratulate Brazil's president and my friend Lula da Silva, and hand over the presidency's gavel to him," Modi said.

Assuming the bloc's presidency, Lula said "geopolitical issues" should not derail discussions, without outright mentioning the diplomatic tussle over the war in Ukraine.  "We have no interest in a divided G20. We need peace and cooperation instead of conflict," he said.  

Leaders of the G20 will continue talks for a second and final day on Sunday.

The third working session of roundtable talks will be under the heading "One Future," with the aim of discussing how to deal with banking and financial reform among others issues.

No other major joint decisions are expected following Saturday's consensus on a joint declaration.

Moscow managed to avoid language in the document explicitly condemned its invasion of Ukraine, in contrast to last year's G20 in Bali, when a "complete and unconditional withdrawal" was demanded.
 

Leaders of the G20 (Group of 20) gathered at Rajghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, who is considered the father of the Indian independence movement.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the leaders to the hallowed site to honor Gandhi, revered for his stance of non-violence.  Gandhi was gunned down by a Hindu nationalist in 1948. 

In the decades since Gandhi's assassination, it has hosted the funeral pyres of India's top statesmen and women.

Following a Hindu devotional hymn, those who gathered stood for a moment's silence before leaving wreaths to honor the peace icon.