PM Modi calls for consensus at G20 foreign ministers' meeting

New Delhi: As the G20 foreign ministers met under the shadow of fractured East-West relations over the Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for building consensus on pressing global challenges and not allowing differences on geopolitical tensions to affect overall cooperation in the grouping.

In his video message at the meeting, Modi also invoked Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha to urge the delegates to draw inspiration from India's civilisational ethos and “focus not on what divides us, but on what unites us.” 

The foreign ministers from the



world's largest industrialised and developing nations held crucial deliberations on key global challenges that took place in the backdrop of the increasingly bitter rift between the US-led West and the Russia-China combine over the Ukraine conflict.

In their remarks, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly and European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell criticised Russia for its invasion of Ukraine while China's Qin Gang referred to the 12-point Chinese peace plan to resolve the conflict.