EXCLUSIVE! S Jaishankar reveals real story behind the New Delhi Declaration
In an exclusive interview with Ambassador TP Sreenivsan, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar provides insights into the diplomacy behind the declaration. He explains the rationale for not simply repeating the Bali Declaration and emphasizes the importance of capturing the evolving situation in Eastern Europe.
FollowAsianet Newsable was the first to reveal to the world that a New Delhi Declaration had been negotiated successfully during the G20 Leaders Summit mentioning the Ukraine war in a manner that was acceptable to both Russia and China who had been opposing it. The outcome of the hectic negotiations was a phenomenal victory for India. In an exclusive interview with Ambassador TP Sreenivsan on Asianet News Network, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar revealed how the New Delhi Declaration was forged and how repeating the Bali Declaration and diverging from Bali would have been a false way of presenting the current situation in Eastern Europe.Â
Watch the full interview BELOW
When asked how India was able to get the West not to name Russia in the New Delhi Declaration, something that could not be avoided in the earlier G20 summit in Bali, the External Affairs Minister said: "Besides the West and Russia, there were a lot of other countries in between. These countries were essentially saying, 'Look after Bali, we all signed up at Bali (declaration) -- including the Russians -- After Bali, many things have happened'. The Black Sea Grain Corridor came up and then it collapsed. The violence has increased. Â The infrastructure is being targeted. There is also some sort of dialogue taking place. So do we stop the clock in Bali and say 'In Bali we decided this, so every G20 meeting we will keep repeating what happened in Bali'?"
"That is not how diplomacy works. That is definitely now how multilateralism works. So we were trying to capture everything that happened between Bali and Delhi. Ultimately, we have to carry everybody. There is no country which will say, 'Okay, that set of paragraphs... I got everything I wanted. Everybody compromised. But that is the nature of multilateralism."
Asked about French President Emmanuel Macron's statement that the Delhi declaration was not a victory for Russia, Jaishankar said: "I think his view was there was not one viewpoint that was prevailing over another point of view. Every country, till the 11th hour, everybody was haggling over this word, that sentence, this formulation or this sequencing of how things should come. There was a lot of give and take. These negotiations have their own dynamics. So he was trying to express that. I also feel that what we ended up with was a good position because it captured the entirety of issues today. For me, repeating Bali (declaration) and diverging from Bali was a false way of presenting the issue. For me, I keep telling people this is not Bali, this is New Delhi. So, a New Delhi declaration had to be forged."
