World

The G20 closed talks in Washington on Thursday without issuing a joint communique, as a growing US-Saudi feud created new tensions in a group already divided over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 major economies met during the IMF and World Bank annual meetings that have focused on the war, soaring inflation and the climate crisis.

But the G20 failed to issue a joint communique at the end of its meeting, as in its last two gatherings. Russian officials participated via video link, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Despite the lack of consensus, officials said the G20 remains a useful forum, with heads of state and government due to meet next month in Bali, Indonesia.

“All member countries underlined that it is very important to continue to preserve this G20 as the premier economic forum for cooperation,” Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, whose country chairs the G20 this year, said at a news conference.

She acknowledged that the group faces “many challenges” and “differences in view”, with “escalating geopolitical conflicts, a war in Ukraine which exacerbated and worsened the economic situation.”

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said before the meeting that it was “better to have a forum to speak in than none.”

“Even if there are different opinions — including those that you don’t share, some even that you don’t understand — it’s still a good forum for a conversation,” Lindner told reporters.

“We could do a communique that doesn’t mention the war in Ukraine, but we don’t want a communique that sweeps things under the rug,” the source familiar with the discussions told AFP.

– Saudi-US spat –

Washington and Riyadh have locked horns over a decision by the OPEC+ group of oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, to sharply cut production — a move that could send energy prices soaring higher.

The source close to the G20 discussions said Western nations explained at the meeting that they were “disappointed” and that the cuts went against Saudi interests “because the risk for them is that they cause a recession.”

“It’s hard to understand,” the source said.

President Joe Biden threatened “consequences” for Saudi Arabia in a CNN interview on Wednesday.

In a rare statement on Thursday, the Saudi foreign ministry denied that the decision was “politically motivated against the United States” and expressed its “total rejection of these statements that are not based on facts.”

But US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby responded that Riyadh knew the cut “would increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions. That is the wrong direction.”

– Oil price cap –

The OPEC+ cut comes as the Group of Seven wealth democracies is seeking to impose a price cap on Russia’s crude exports, a move aimed at stripping the country of a major source of funding for its war machine.

But gaining broad global approval for a price cap may prove to be a major challenge.

While Western nations have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, other countries have maintained economic ties with Moscow, with India and China stepping up their purchases of Russian oil.

Despite the lack of a joint communique, Indrawati said the G20 made progress on a number of issues, including sustainable finance and efforts to impose a global minimum tax on major corporations.

Tensions within the G20 come as leaders are due to meet in Bali next month — a summit that could see Biden share the same venue as Russian President Vladimir Putin and another rival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The lack of consensus within the group also comes ahead of the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November.

Russia agreed Thursday to help residents leave a region it “annexed” in a sign of success for Ukraine’s counter-offensive, as the EU warned Moscow’s army would be “annihilated” if the Kremlin uses nuclear weapons.

Moscow’s decision to assist people in leaving Kherson came a day after Kyiv said it had retaken five settlements in the southern region.

“The government took the decision to organise assistance for the departure of residents of the (Kherson) region,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said.

The Moscow-appointed head of the area had appealed for intervention.

Vladimir Saldo suggested residents “leave to other regions to protect themselves from missile strikes”.

Those departing would go to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014, and southern Russian regions.

Kyiv, which announced its counter-offensive in the south in August, said it has already recaptured over 400 square kilometres (155 miles) in the Kherson region in under a week.

Kherson, which lies near Crimea, was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces after the February 24 invasion.

– Nuclear threat –

In Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell sent a strong message to the Kremlin after President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats of resorting to nuclear weapons to stem growing battlefield losses.

“Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing,” Borrell said.

“Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer, but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated.”

The NATO alliance has stopped short of threatening to use its nuclear arsenal to respond as non-member Ukraine is not covered by its mutual self-defence clause.

In Kazakhstan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Turkey’s booming trade ties with Moscow during an in-person meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a regional summit.

But Erdogan did not deliver an offer to mediate negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv — expected by the Kremlin — and comments between the leaders made no mention of Ukraine, focusing instead on economic ties.

Putin proposed to create a “gas hub” in Turkey as Russia’s supplies to Europe have been disrupted by Ukraine-related sanctions — an idea that France’s presidency said made “no sense”.

NATO member Turkey has sought to retain dialogue with its Western allies as well as Moscow, and has not joined sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday that “legal mechanisms” are needed to punish Russian war crimes.

“We must continue our dialogue in order to hold Russia as the aggressor state and each of the Russian murderers and torturers to account for all crimes in this war,” he said via video link.

– Rebels push to Bakhmut –

On the battlefield, Russian-backed separatist forces in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine said they had captured two villages near the industrial city of Bakhmut, posting small gains against Kyiv’s counter-offensive.

The villages lie just south of Bakhmut, a wine-making and salt-mining city that used to be populated by some 70,000 people and which Russian forces have been pummelling for weeks.

The reported gains came after Ukrainian troops had for weeks been clawing back large swathes of territory in the south and east of Ukraine — including Donetsk — controlled by Russian forces for months.

The Ukrainian military in an update said that it had repelled attacks near several frontline villages.

The governor of the Belgorod region also said that Ukrainian shelling hit housing in the southern Russian city and blew up a munitions depot in the border area.

– Boy pulled from rubble –

AFP reporters in Yampil just outside the recently recaptured Ukrainian town of Lyman on Thursday heard heavy exchanges of artillery fire to the southeast.

A Ukrainian soldier returning from the frontline said positions in Torske village were under fire from Russian guns guided by spotter drones.

Also in the south, the town of Mykolaiv was again rocked by Russian bombardments.

The head of the city Oleksandr Sienkevych said on social media a five-storey residential building was hit, with two upper floors destroyed.

“An 11-year-old boy was recovered from under the rubble and another seven people may still be there,” he said, adding a security guard was killed at a sea rescue station.

The United States promised Thursday to do more to combat arms smuggling with Mexico, which said that early efforts have succeeded in denting the country’s long dire homicide rate.

Top officials from the neighboring nations met in Washington after also sealing a deal that would keep in Mexico most of the Venezuelan migrants seeking to enter the United States, an arrangement that drew criticism from some usual allies of President Joe Biden.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the two nations worked together to seize 32,000 weapons this year and credited the effort with a 9.2 percent drop in homicides inside his country.

“These are not just statistics. We’re talking about saving lives,” Ebrard said.

“There is still a ways to go; this doesn’t mean everything is solved. But the most important indicator is that for the first time in the past few years we have seen a reduction not just in homicides but kidnappings, robberies and vehicle theft.”

The cooperation is part of a so-called Bicentennial Framework sealed a year ago to mark two centuries of diplomatic relations.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the two countries would set up a new task force to see “what more we can do to counter this problem.”

“We will be unrelenting in our attack of it,” he told a news conference.

Mexico has long pointed the finger at the United States and its lax gun laws for the flow of weapons to its cartels, which in turn are often funded by selling drugs to US consumers.

Mexico on Monday filed its latest lawsuit in a US court, seeking action against an Arizona gun seller accused of working with smugglers.

Mindful of political sensitivities in the United States, where the rival Republican Party champions the right to bear arms, Mayorkas stressed that the two countries were working only against transnational smuggling and not on domestic gun policy.

– Curbing Venezuelan migration –

The Biden administration took office pledging a more humane approach to migrants than under former president Donald Trump, who had promised a wall on the Mexican border.

But in a policy mirroring Trump’s efforts to block Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence, the Biden administration announced Wednesday that Venezuelans who try to walk or swim into the United States would be sent to Mexico and not admitted.

Nearly six million Venezuelans have fled years of economic implosion under leftist leader Nicolas Maduro. Some 2.4 million are in neighboring Colombia but a rising number have tried to enter the United States.

The Biden administration said it would also let some 24,000 Venezuelans enter lawfully if they have support in the United States and pass vetting, in line with procedures for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion.

Senator Bob Menendez, a member of Biden’s Democratic Party who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the legal pathway but said it was “inexcusable” to send more of the Venezuelan migrants to Mexico.

The decision “adds salt to an open wound while further eroding our asylum system that President Biden promised to restore,” Menendez said in a statement.

Daniel Berlin of the International Rescue Committee said that restrictive policies “only fuel the further exploitation of those in desperate need of safety.”

Mayorkas insisted that the new policy would discourage Venezuelans from taking “desperate and dangerous” measures including through human smugglers.

Instead they will be encouraged to “take the humane, safe and orderly pathway to a better life,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday stressed the need to punish all Russian “murderers and torturers” and appealed for more air defence systems to fight Moscow’s renewed offensive.

Zelensky told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that bringing the offenders to book was necessary to ensure lasting peace on the continent.

“We must continue our dialogue in order to hold Russia as the aggressor state and each of the Russian murderers and torturers to account for all crimes in this war, for every manifestation of terror,” he said via video link.

“When these legal mechanisms are established and operational, it will be one of the most powerful guarantees of long-term peace”.

The Ukrainian leader had made a similar appeal at the end of September at the United Nations.

The International Criminal Court based in The Hague opened its own probe into the war in Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded in February, but has said it is keen for Ukraine to bring suspects to justice where possible.

The ICC prosecutor on Thursday said Ukraine could extradite Russian war crimes suspects to the Hague-based court even though Moscow is not a member. 

Zelensky also reproached PACE saying it had turned a blind eye when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014.

“In fact, there was an attempt to write off everything that Russia did against Ukraine and European values, starting in 2014. Write off under the guise of stories that it was necessary to maintain dialogue with Russia at all possible levels,” he said.

Zelensky called for Europe to isolate Russia diplomatically as he made a renewed pitch  for “modern anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence systems” to “protect our sky from the terror of Russia”. 

“If this is done, it will be a fundamental step to end the entire war in the near future,” he said.

“Europe can take the lead in the efforts to compensate for the damage caused by this war,” he said. 

“We have to create an appropriate compensation mechanism – and we suggest the way to create it. The corresponding project has already been prepared by Ukraine. I urge you to support it — both in Europe and at the level of the UN General Assembly”.

Despite a rocket attack on Baghdad’s Green Zone, Iraqi lawmakers Thursday elected a new president who swiftly named a prime minister in hopes of ending a year of political gridlock and violence in the war-scarred nation.

Abdul Latif Rashid, a 78-year-old Iraqi Kurd, was elected as head of state, replacing Barham Saleh, by the assembly in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic district.

Rashid won more than 160 votes against 99 for the incumbent Saleh, an assembly official said.

The new president swiftly named Shiite politician Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as prime minister-designate, tasking him with reconciling feuding Shiite factions and forming a government a whole year after Iraq last went to the polls.

The 52-year-old Sudani, who has the backing of influential pro-Iran factions, vowed to form a government “as quickly as possible”, but faces the daunting task of winning over their rivals, the millions of diehard supporters of fiery cleric Moqtada Sadr.

When Sudani was first proposed in July, the move sparked mass protests by Sadr’s followers, who breached the Green Zone and stormed parliament.

He now has 30 days to form a new government capable of commanding a majority in parliament.

Western governments swiftly welcomed the move to end Iraq’s political standoff.

The French embassy congratulated Sudani on his nomination and called for the “formation of a government that will do all in its power to answer the legitimate demands of all Iraqi people and especially its youth.”

A reminder of Iraq’s troubles came earlier in the day as lawmakers headed into parliament, when a barrage of nine Katyusha-style rockets rained down on the area, the security forces said.

At least 10 people were wounded, including six members of the security forces or bodyguards of lawmakers, as well as four civilians in a nearby district, a security official told AFP.

US ambassador Alina Romanowski condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” on Twitter and warned that “the people of Iraq must resolve their political differences & grievances solely thru peaceful means. 

“Attacks like these undermine democracy & trap Iraq in a perpetual cycle of violence.”

– ‘Crisis breeds instability’ –

The democratic institutions built in oil-rich Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein remain fragile, and neighbouring Iran wields major influence.

For just over a year now, Iraq has had only a caretaker government to tackle an array of pressing problems, including unemployment, decaying infrastructure, corruption and the impacts of climate change.

The United Nations mission in Iraq warned this week that “the protracted crisis is breeding further instability” and that the divisive politics are “generating bitter public disillusion”.

Lawmakers had made three previous attempts to elect a new head of state, in February and March, but failed to even reach the required two-thirds threshold for a quorum.

Under Iraq’s post-Saddam power-sharing system, meant to avoid more sectarian conflict, the president by convention is Kurdish, the prime minister a Shiite Arab and the parliament speaker a Sunni Arab.

The presidency has usually been held by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Rashid and Saleh. This year the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) had demanded the presidency but ultimately abandoned the bid.

Rashid, a hydraulic engineer versed in environmental issues, is seen as a compromise candidate for the polarised country.

Iraq’s rival Shiite political factions, the most powerful players, have been bitterly vying for influence.

Sadr has pushed for parliament to be dissolved to clear the way for fresh elections, while the rival Coordination Framework, to which the prime minister-designate belongs, insisted that a new government be formed first.

The standoff has seen both sides set up protest camps in the Green Zone this year. 

Tensions boiled over on August 29 when more than 30 Sadr supporters were killed in battles with Iran-backed factions and the army.

Political analyst Ali al-Baidar said he could not rule out an escalation between the opposing sides but said he thought it more likely that a backroom deal had been done under which the Sadrists will receive additional cabinet posts in return for their tacit approval of Sudani’s nomination.