US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday discussed the importance of protecting democracy, human rights, food security with Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero.
“Good conversation with Argentine Foreign Minister@SantiagoCafiero at the G20 this afternoon. We spoke about the importance of protecting democracy, human rights, food security, and our shared commitment to a secure and prosperous hemisphere,” tweeted Blinken. Both leaders participated in the ongoing G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in the national capital, New Delhi.
Blinken on Thursday spoke briefly with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the meeting of foreign minister of the Group of 20 nations.
“US Secretary of State Blinken asked for ‘contact’ with Foreign Minister Lavrov, during the second session of G20 meet and they had the ‘contact’, there were no talks or full-fledged meeting,” according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zarkhova.
The meeting, was the first face-to-face meeting between the two foreign ministers since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began over a year ago and which triggered a rift between US-led Western countries and Russia.
Washington Post cited a senior State Department official familiar with the discussion to say, “During the less-than-10-minute exchange, Blinken urged Russia to reverse its decision to suspend cooperation in the New START nuclear arms treaty and accept a US proposal for the release of US citizen Paul Whelan.”
The US-based newspaper reported that Blinken also reaffirmed Washington’s support for Ukraine’s peace proposal that maintains the country’s territorial integrity, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
Addressing the presser in New Delhi, Lavrov said the West refused to include Russia’s proposal on the need for an investigation of Nord Stream blasts in the G20 final declaration, according to Sputnik News Agency.
“They [Western countries] also refused to accept another fact in this context, which reflects the events that have taken place since then. I am referring to the terrorist act against the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Our proposal to include in the document the need for an impartial and honest investigation was categorically rejected by our Western partners,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov landed in New Delhi on Tuesday for a two-day meeting of the G20 FMM.
The minister addressing a press conference here said that the West insisted on reproducing the same text that was adopted in Bali last year mentioning the situation in Ukraine.
“The West insisted on reproducing the text on the situation around Ukraine, which was agreed at the G20 summit last year in Bali, completely ignoring our arguments that a lot of events have happened since then, including the sincere confessions of Mrs. [ex-German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, Mr. [former French President Francois] Hollande, Mr. [ex-Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko, and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky himself that none of them was going to fulfill the Minsk agreements and the purpose of signing the Minsk agreements from the point of view of Western interests was to gain time to pump Ukraine with weapons and prepare it for war against Russia,” Sputnik quoted Lavrov as saying. (ANI)
