India was also surprised by South Korea before the G-20 foreign ministers meet on Wednesday. Japan was the first country to do so. The report says that the Foreign Minister of South Korea will not go to India for the G-20 meeting because he has to take care of things at home.
Earlier, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi also said he wouldn’t go to India because he had to focus on work in the parliament instead of the G-20 meeting. Japan’s Foreign Ministry says that Kenji Yamada, who is the country’s deputy foreign minister, will be at this meeting.
At the same time, diplomatic sources say that South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has said that its foreign minister will not attend the G-20 meeting in India because he or she is too busy with things in South Korea.
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Since the start of the G-20, India has been under pressure because it is not taking a side in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
There are also questions about whether or not there will be a joint statement. This is because there are different opinions on the Ukraine issue, and the foreign ministers of some important countries are not at the meeting. Even before the meeting, the foreign ministers of Russia and the European Union made it clear that Ukraine is firm on its position on the war.
why give India a hard time?
The fact that Japan and South Korea’s foreign ministers didn’t come to India for an important meeting like the G-20 is seen as a setback because Japan is a close friend of India and is also in charge of the G-7 group this year. South Korea is also one of the most important investors in the Indian economy.
People think that the Japanese Foreign Minister didn’t go to the G-20 conference in India because Japan, an important friend of India, has been saying in bilateral statements since the last summit that the G-7 meeting and the G-20 meeting, both of which India is leading, will bring the two countries even closer together under the leadership of Japan.
what the professionals say
Satoru Nagao, a Japan researcher at the Hudson Institute in Washington, says that even though the Modi government put a lot of diplomatic and political capital into the G-20 summit, India would be in danger if Japan’s foreign minister didn’t show up. We should be worried about something.
the Modi government!
Aside from this, it hasn’t been decided yet if the Japanese Foreign Minister will be at the meeting of the Quad countries on March 3 after the G-20 meeting. It will be interesting to see if this meeting will happen without the Foreign Minister of Japan or if Foreign Minister Hayashi will join virtually from Tokyo.
Relationships are different because of the war in Ukraine.
India and Japan are good friends, but the war in Ukraine has caused political differences between the two. Because of the war in Ukraine, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is being tough on Russia and has put sanctions on Russia, just like the West has.
India, on the other hand, has stopped criticizing Russia in international forums and is buying a lot of crude oil from Russia at low prices.
When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida went to India last year, he also brought up this issue. In private, Indian officials have often expressed worry about this move Japan is making toward Ukraine.
One of the biggest investors in India is South Korea.
Aside from Japan, it’s important that the Foreign Minister of South Korea wasn’t at the G-20 meeting because South Korea is one of the biggest investors in the Indian economy. South Asian countries’ consumer goods markets are dominated by South Korean companies.
South Korea started the Indo-Pacific strategy right away in December. This was a very important step for South Korea to take, because before it didn’t back US policy in the Indo-Pacific region. The Korean Peninsula was a bigger part of South Korea’s foreign policy.