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21-08-2022
LONDON: Russia has no moral right to sit at the Group of 20 nations while it presses on with its invasion of Ukraine, a spokesperson for Britain’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
“Russia has no moral right to sit at the G20 while its aggression in Ukraine persists,” the spokesperson said.
“We welcome Indonesia’s efforts to ensure that the impacts of Russia’s war are considered in G20 meetings, as well as indications that Ukraine may be represented by President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy at the G20 Leaders Summit.”
Indonesia will host the summit in November and has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will attend.
Earlier on Friday, Rishi Sunak, one of the two candidates vying to replace Boris Johnson as British prime minister, has called on the G-20 to bar Putin from its meetings until Moscow halts the war in Ukraine.
“Our G-20 partners and allies have a collective responsibility to call Putin’s abhorrent behaviour out. Sitting round a table with him isn’t good enough when he is responsible for children being killed in their beds as they sleep,” a spokesman for former finance minister Sunak said. “We need to send a strong message to Putin that he doesn’t have a seat at the table unless and until he stops his illegal war in Ukraine.”
The campaign for other candidate in the contest to replace Johnson, current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, referred to comments she made in July when she said it would be important to confront Putin in front of allies like India and Indonesia. “I would go there, and I would call Putin out,” she told a televised debate on July 25.
On Thursday, Indonesia President Joko Widodo told Bloomberg News that both leaders had given him their assurances.
The trip would be Xi’s first time outside China since January 2020, when he visited Myanmar.
US President Joe Biden is expected to attend the G-20 summit but the White House has not said whether he will meet Xi.
Chinese officials are reportedly making plans for a November meeting in Southeast Asia between Xi and Biden, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
A spokesman for the White House National Security Council reiterated that Biden did not think Putin should attend “as he wages his war against Ukraine” but if Putin did, Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskiy who Indonesia has invited, should do likewise, the spokesman said. (Int’l News Desk)
