The discussions are expected to be dominated by the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The West and Russia will face each other on Wednesday February 21 and Thursday February 22 in Rio de Janeiro, during a meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 countries.
Arriving Tuesday evening in Brazil, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken must meet the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov in this forum hosted by the Latin American giant, which has held the presidency of the group since December.
But the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, will not be present for this first major meeting of the year of the G20, whose summit of heads of state will take place in November, also in Rio. France is represented by Stéphane Séjourné, who previously visited Argentina.
For Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the G20 "is the forum most likely to positively influence the international agenda."
But his ambitions to mediate global crises appeared to have been compromised on Sunday, when he sparked a diplomatic storm by comparing the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the Holocaust. These comments led to his being declared “persona non grata” in Israel.
“If Lula thought he was proposing peace resolutions during the G20, not only for the Middle East, but also for Ukraine, I think that is no longer relevant,” Igor Lucena, specialist, told AFP. Brazilian international relations.
More than four months after the start of the conflict in Gaza, peace still appears very far away. On Tuesday, the United States vetoed a new draft UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
The outlook is at least as bleak for the conflict in Ukraine, on which G20 members are evenly divided.
Despite pressure from Western countries to condemn the Russian invasion, the group's last summit, in September in New Delhi, resulted in a vague final statement.
Read also End of the G20 summit: a success according to Lavrov and Lula, “insufficient” for Macron
The text denounced the use of force, but without citing Vladimir Putin's Russia, which maintains close ties with G20 members such as India or Brazil.
On Saturday, members of the G7, which includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada, all allies of Ukraine, are expected to discuss at a meeting virtual reality of a tightening of sanctions against Moscow.
Give more weight to the countries of the South
The opening session of the G20 foreign ministers' meeting, which will take place at the Marina da Gloria site, a marina with breathtaking views of Rio Bay, is due to focus on Wednesday afternoon on " international tensions.
Slogans "Rio capital of the G20" have flourished in Brazil's second city, which will host the summit of heads of state of this organization in November. © Pablo Porciuncula, AFP
The debates on Thursday morning are supposed to address a "reform of global governance", a subject dear to Brazil, which wants to give more weight to countries of the South in institutions such as the UN, the IMF or the World Bank. .
“We have returned to the level of the Cold War in terms of the number of conflicts and their seriousness, which gives this subject a whole new urgency,” said Mauricio Lyrio, a of the main Brazilian diplomats in charge of the G20.
“Currently, we are content to put out fires (...) We must adapt the international system so that it allows the prevention of new conflicts,” he added.
The two other priorities of the Brazilian presidency of the G20 are the fight against hunger and global warming.
A year 2024 marked by major elections
Bilateral meetings are also planned on the sidelines of the meeting in Rio, but a meeting between MM. Blinken and Lavrov seem improbable in view of the tensions which followed the announcement, Friday, of the death in prison of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny.
Their last interview dates back to March 2023, during a G20 meeting in India.
Founded in 1999, the G20 brings together most of the world's major economies, as well as the European Union and the African Union.
If his vocation was initially mainly economic, he showed himself to be increasingly influential in world politics. But Igor Lucena sees little chance of diplomatic progress this year, marked by major elections in around fifty countries, including the United States and Russia.
For him, “it is not a favorable environment for resolving conflicts, on the contrary”.
With AFP
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