India on Thursday continued with its balancing act as Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually took part in the BRICS summit, which saw Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin criticising the western nations of misusing financial sanctions against other countries and of "selfishly endangering" the global economy.
The BRICS leaders committed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, although the summit took place amid continuing China-India military stand-off along the disputed boundary between the two nations and Russia’s military offensives in Ukraine.
Though Xi and Putin slammed the western nations while participating in the BRICS summit, India stonewalled attempts by China and Russia to incorporate in the “Beijing Declaration” – the outcome document issued after the summit – any harsh criticism against the US, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Modi said that the BRICS members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – had a very similar view of the governance of the global economy and hence mutual cooperation among the five nations could make a useful contribution to post-Covid-19 global recovery.
Putin criticised the US and other western nations for imposing sanctions on Russia in the wake of its offensive against Ukraine. He said that it was due to ill-considered and selfish actions of some nations that the global economy had landed in a crisis. He accused the western nations of “using financial mechanisms” to "shunt their own mistakes in macroeconomic policy onto the whole world”. Xi called for rejection of the “Cold War mentality” and for opposing unilateral sanctions. He tacitly accused the US of abusing sanctions.
The joint declaration issued by the BRICS leaders extended support to talks between Russia and Ukraine. They also discussed about concerns over the humanitarian situation in and around Ukraine and expressed support to the efforts of the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide humanitarian assistance in accordance with the basic principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality established in the UN General Assembly resolution 46/182.
Modi will also join the US President Joe Biden and the leaders of the other western nations at the G7 summit to be held at Schloss Elmau in Germany on June 26 and 27.
India over the past few months drew flak from the western nations not only for steadfastly refusing to slam Russia in international for a for its war against Ukraine, but also for raising its oil imports from the country, which came under tough sanctions imposed by the US, the UK and the European Union in response to its military aggression.
Modi joined Xi, Putin and the leaders of Brazil and South Africa, Jair Bolsonaro and Cyril Ramaphosa, extend support for an open, transparent, inclusive, non-discriminatory and rules-based multilateral trading system, as embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO). They vowed to engage constructively to pursue the necessary WTO reform to build an open world economy.
The BRICS leaders called upon all the WTO members to avoid unilateral and protectionist measures that run counter to the spirit and rules of the organisation.
They opposed green trade barriers and underlined that all measures taken to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss must be designed, adopted and implemented in full conformity with the WTO agreements and must not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade and must not create unnecessary obstacles to international trade.