India: Jaishankar caps day of intense development diplomacy

United Nations: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar capped a day of intense diplomacy with a meeting with General Assembly President Csaba Korosi discussing global development and the UN’s role while assuring him of India’s support.

On Monday, the eve of the high-level Assembly meeting, he held bilateral meetings also with eight foreign ministers and attended two multilateral sessions covering a geography from Indonesia to Trinidad and topics ranging from security, food and agriculture to economy and development.

Jaishankar tried to bring focus in his meeting with Korosi and others to matters of vital importance to the developing nations like energy and food security, fertiliser availability, health issues, global debt concerns and trade disruption problems, according to an official source.

After his meeting with Korosi, Jaishankar tweeted: “Assured him of India’s fullest support. Discussed the criticality of SDG agenda for global progress. Shared Indian experiences in that regard.”

SDGs are the 17 sustainable development goals set by the UN to be achieved by 2030 and cover topics ranging from environment to education, and from poverty to peace but which are now facing a setback from the Covid pandemic and the fallout of the Ukraine war.

Jaishankar’s first meeting of the day was with Argentina’s Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who is the President pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), along with Foreign Ministers Mario Adolfo Bucaro Flores of Guatemala and Amery Browne of Trinidad and Tobago.

The meeting aimed at highlighting the growing relations between India and the CELAC countries in areas ranging from health and science to trade and energy and to develop them further, the source said, pointing out that India, for example, ranks among the top five trade partners of Brazil and Argentina.

Cafiero tweeted, that CELAC “reactivated after 5 years the region’s link with India”.

“The unity of the countries of the global south will make it possible to strengthen the energy and food security agenda, which is key to the development of our peoples,” he added in the Spanish language tweet.

At their meeting, Jaishankar and Browne reviewed the ties between Trinidad, whose population of Indian descent is about 40 per cent, and India and discussed strengthening it, according to a source.

Indonesia is the president of the G20, the group of developed and emerging nations, and is scheduled to hand over the baton to India in December.

Jaishankar’s meeting with Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi centred on the work of the G20 and the transfer of the presidency, the source said.

“We spoke on G20 cooperation, including ensuring concrete deliverables for G20 2022,” Marsudi tweeted.

The source said that during the meeting with Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry of Egypt they noted the closely shared outlook on many issues, especially in development, and spoke about cooperation in the nonaligned movement and at the UN, the source said.

Jaishankar tweeted that they “discussed our close cooperation at the UN and NAM (Nonaligned Movement). Recognized the value Egypt’s participation in G20 will bring next year.

Of importance to India is that Egypt is hosting in November the next UN climate change meeting which is formally known as COP27 for the 27th edition of the Conference of Parties to one of the international agreements on climate.