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G20 Summit Ends With Absence of US 11/24 06:17
The Group of 20 summit in South Africa ended Sunday with the glaring absence
of the United States -- the next country to lead the bloc -- after the Trump
administration boycotted the two days of talks involving leaders of the world's
richest and top developing economies.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- The Group of 20 summit in South Africa ended Sunday
with the glaring absence of the United States -- the next country to lead the
bloc -- after the Trump administration boycotted the two days of talks
involving leaders of the world's richest and top developing economies.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the summit in Johannesburg
closed by banging a wooden gavel on a block like a judge would, in a G20
tradition. The gavel would normally be handed over to the leader of the next
country to hold the rotating presidency, but no U.S. official was there to
receive it.
The world's biggest economy boycotted a summit meant to bring rich and
developing nations together over President Donald Trump's claims that South
Africa is violently persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.
The White House said it intended in a last-minute decision for an official
from its embassy in South Africa to attend the G20 handover. But South Africa
refused that, saying it was an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to a junior
embassy official. In the end, no U.S. delegation was accredited for the summit,
according to the South African Foreign Ministry.
South Africa said the handover would happen later, possibly at its foreign
ministry. Trump has said the U.S. will hold next year's summit at his golf club
in Doral, Florida.
"This gavel of this G20 summit formally closes this summit and now moves on
to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we shall
see each other again next year," Ramaphosa said as he closed the summit, making
no reference to the U.S. absence in his speech.
Breaking with tradition
The first G20 summit in Africa also broke with tradition on Saturday by
issuing a leaders' declaration on the opening day of the talks, when
declarations usually come at the end of the summit.
The declaration was significant in that it came in the face of opposition
from the U.S., which has for months been critical of a South African agenda for
the group that largely focused on climate change and global wealth inequality
-- focuses the Trump administration derided. Argentina said it also opposed the
declaration after Argentine President Javier Milei -- a Trump ally -- also
skipped the summit.
Other G20 nations, including China, Russia, France, Germany, the U.K., Japan
and Canada, backed the declaration, which called for more global attention on
issues that specifically affect poor countries, such as the need for financial
help for their recovery efforts after climate-related disasters, finding ways
to ease their debt levels and supporting their transition to climate-friendly
green energy sources.
"South Africa has used this presidency to place the priorities of Africa and
the Global South firmly at the heart of the G20 agenda," Ramaphosa said.
After his speech, Ramaphosa was hugged and congratulated by other leaders
for hosting a summit largely overshadowed by the U.S. boycott, and he was heard
in a hot-mic moment that was not meant to be broadcast saying: "It was not
easy."
The G20 is 'struggling'
South Africa championed its G20 declaration as a victory for the summit and
for international cooperation in the face of the Trump administration's
"America First" foreign policy. However, G20 declarations are general
agreements by member countries that aren't binding, and their long-term impact
has been questioned.
Also, while the declaration included many of South Africa's priorities, some
concrete proposals didn't make the document. There was no mention of a new
international panel on wealth inequality, similar to the United
Nations-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which South Africa
and others had called for.
The G20 was formed in 1999 in response to the Asian financial crisis and is
made up of 19 rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African
Union, but some have questioned its effectiveness in helping solve the most
prominent global crises, like the Russia-Ukraine war and tensions in the Middle
East.
The 122-point Johannesburg declaration made just one reference to Ukraine in
a general call for an end to global conflicts and the summit appeared to have
made no difference to the nearly four-year war, even as leaders or high-level
delegations from all the major European nations, the EU and Russia sat in the
same room for the G20 gathering.
"Meeting for the first time on the African continent marks an important
milestone," French President Emmanuel Macron said, but added the bloc was
"struggling to have a common standard on geopolitical crises."
A symbolic summit for poorer countries
Still, some praised the summit as a significant symbolic moment for the G20.
"This is the first ever meeting of world leaders in history where the
inequality emergency was put at the center of the agenda," said Max Lawson of
Oxfam, the international nonprofit that works to alleviate global poverty.
"The importance of addressing development priorities from the African
perspective cannot be overemphasized," said Namibia President Netumbo
Nandi-Ndaitwah, whose southern African country of 3 million people was one of
more than 20 smaller nations invited as guests to attend the summit alongside
the G20 members.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the G20 summit in South Africa:
https://apnews.com/hub/g20-summit
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