EAM S Jaishankar on four-day visit to London for G7 Foreign Ministers’ meet

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will start a four-day visit to London from Monday primarily to attend a gathering of international ministers of Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations. The United Kingdom has invited India for an in-person G7 international ministers assembly, for which FMs of Australia, South Korea, South Africa, and the Chair and Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have additionally been invited. 

A ministry of exterior affairs launch mentioned,”External Affairs Minister will be visiting London from 3-6 May 2021 to participate in the G7 Foreign Ministers Meeting, at which India has been invited as a guest country. He will thereafter undertake a bilateral visit to the UK.”

The meet takes place in London from May third to fifth and would be the first bodily G7 FMs meet to happen in over 2 years. The final such G7 FMs meet came about in Dinard and Saint-Malo, France in April 2019. 

Ahead of the visit, EAM and UK Foreign secretary Dominic Raab each spoke to one another on a variety of points together with the continued covid pandemic in India. The UK is sending provides to India to cope with the devastating covid pandemic. These provides embody 495 oxygen concentrators, that may extract oxygen from the air, 120 non-invasive ventilators, and 20 handbook ventilators.

The visit by EAM won’t solely see him collaborating in G7 FMs meet but in addition many bilaterals as nicely. US Secretary of state Antony Blinken may even journey to London and a bilateral between the 2 is probably going. This will the primary bodily meet between the two ministers because the new Biden administration took cost.

“Secretary Blinken will attend the G7 Foreign and Development Minister’s Meeting in London, the United Kingdom, from May 3-5, 2021.”, the US State Department mentioned.

G7 is a grouping of seven industrialized countries–Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, US & UK – plus the EU. The key focus of the meet clearly might be on the continued covid disaster that continues to ravage massive components of the world but in addition Climate Change with the UK set to host the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) meet later this yr.

The meet may even discuss concerning the agenda of the upcoming G7 leaders meet underneath UK’s chairmanship. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been invited to the forty seventh G7 summit that can happen in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, the UK from eleventh to thirteenth June. India has been usually invited for the G7 summit since 2019–first by France, then in 2020 by the US, and now by the UK this yr. The bodily G7 meet final yr, underneath the then US President Donald Trump by no means occurred, for causes not identified however maybe due to covid pandemic. 

The then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was first invited for the G8 grouping in 2005, again then by the UK in Gleneagles. Group grew to become G7 after Russia was “disinvited” in 2014 over the Crimea disaster.

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