The consensus that India managed to forge between G20 members, to arrive at the `G20 Leaders’ New Delhi Declaration’ on Saturday required tenacious following up on each and every issue and tackling of individual concerns of different countries, sources close to the development have said.
“A lot had obviously been settled prior to the G20 Summit. But some strands remained to be sorted out till the very end, including the language to be used on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Each and every issue was pursued diligently by our officials building up to a final consensus,” an official tracking the matter told businessline.
“You could call it `Modi ka Magic’ as arriving at a consensus on the first day of the Summit was no less than magical,” he added.
The Ministry of External Affairs, that coordinated the summit proceedings with the G20 Sherpa, particularly appreciated the role of four of its officials who were working for a consensus document for months– Abhay Thakur, Ashish Sinha, Nagaraj Naidu Kakanur, and Enam Gambhir.
“The four MEA officials closely working on the document did exceptionally good work. We are very proud of their tenacity. And they had the backing of a very dedicated team of officials,” the source said.
The team of officials worked together with all members and also pursued each G20 member individually to find out particular concerns to help sort them out. “There are objections to certain things. We try to sort it out. Our team went about doing this. So we had a very important role forging a consensus,” the source said.
The Indian negotiators would go to one country delegation that may have a particular concern. After understanding the nuances it would approach another country, that may be part of the concern, to work out a compromise, the source explained. “The help of some developing country members, including Brazil and South Africa, was also taken to reach the consensus,” the source said.
At the end of it, Russia as well as Western nations seemed satisfied with the text. “The fact that the text says countries should be refraining from occupying territory and the acquisition of territory should not be recognized is a key point. And equally, the text calls for the stop of attacks on food and energy infrastructure, which I think is critical going forward. And lastly, the term just and durable peace was in the text,” an EU official said in a media interaction on Sunday.
Russia, too, seemed happy with the fact that it was not named. “The text doesn’t mention Russia at all,” he said. The Ukraine crisis is mentioned but only in the context of the need to settle all conflicts that are there in the world and settle them according to UN charter, he added.