G7 wants to strengthen link with Global South against China and Russia – 05/17/2023 – World

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is due to arrive in Hiroshima, Japan, this Thursday night (Brasília time) (18), for a new meeting with global leaders.

From Friday (19) to Sunday (21), in the first Japanese city where the United States detonated an atomic bomb in 1945, the G7 meeting will take place, the group of rich countries led by the United States, plus guests from the Global South, including Lula —in his seventh participation.

“Strengthening ties with the Global South”, incidentally, is one of the two axes defined by Japan, as the host country. The other is “defending the international order”, in a scenario where this concept is being challenged by the War in Ukraine and by repeated clashes between powers like the US and China.

In order to approach the Global South, the leaders of the “G20 troika”, as the team formed by Brazil, future president of the group that brings together rich and emerging countries, India, president this year, and Indonesia, who chaired the previous year.

Lula hesitated to go, demanding greater concrete participation from the emerging guests, and only confirmed the trip last week. Brazilians must make speeches about the economy, climate and peace, the three main segments of the expanded dialogue with the Global South. The expectation is that the Brazilian, as he has been doing on trips abroad, will speak vehemently.

“Certainly the president will make a defense of multilateralism,” he told Sheet Celso Amorim, Lula’s special advisor for foreign policy. This time, the ex-chancellor did not travel with Lula. Sent before to Kiev, to meet with President Volodimir Zelenski, the 80-year-old diplomat returned to Brazil sick. “I had an ear problem and thought it wiser not to travel.”

Questioned whether the attention given to the “troika” of Brazil, India and Indonesia is aimed at keeping the big emerging countries away from China, Amorim said that this is a possibility, but added that it would be an impossible task. “It makes no sense to try to isolate it. It’s okay that the G7 has its policy there, that it wants to have proposals and discuss. But of course, if you want global solutions, it’s impossible to do without China. In reality, So is Russia, but it has specific difficulties at the moment.”

Like Lula, US President Joe Biden also threatened not to attend the summit, but for internal political reasons. He is negotiating with Congress to raise the country’s public debt ceiling, to avoid a default that would happen in two weeks. Republicans want to cut spending.

Any default would have global economic repercussions, including involving Japan itself, the largest holder of US debt securities. The issue had already focused attention on the previous meeting of G7 finance ministers, last week.

Biden suspended a trip he would make afterwards to the Quad meeting, another opposition bloc to China that he has been putting together, this one with India, Japan and Australia, the host.

With little time in Hiroshima, the American president seeks a meeting during the G7 with the entire “G20 troika”, but the Indian government is reportedly refusing.

What was confirmed by the Itamaraty was a bilateral meeting between Lula and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and another with the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, both on Friday. There is also an attempt to arrange a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. It is part of the effort to reintroduce Brazil to the main world players, according to Amorim.

With Widodo, the summit of tropical forest countries, to be held in July, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which invited Brazil and Indonesia, the other two large countries with forests of the genre, should be discussed. Asked whether another multilateral forum was being formed, Amorim commented that “these are forums of variable geometry, because in certain topics you have a factor that brings countries closer together, in this case, tropical forests.”

But the summit of forests could be under threat. Lula, with hip pain and at risk of surgery, would have to reduce his trips abroad, according to information from GloboNews. Until the end of the year, he has scheduled participation in the G20 summit, in India, in the Brics group, in South Africa, and in the annual opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations, in which Brazil traditionally makes the opening speech.