G20 not appropriate forum to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine, says Brazil President Lula da Silva

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Saturday said that G20 is a forum to discuss economic issues as it was built after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and that it is not an appropriate forum to talk about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In an exclusive interview to Firstpost, Lula da Silva said, “G20 is a forum that was built because of the 2008 and 2009 global financial crisis. From there onwards, the G20 started to discuss many economic issues, and… Wood institutions were also started to be discussed, the World Bank, the IMF… In attempt to try to improve the functioning of these multilateral institutions. That’s why we didn’t want to here in India, we would discuss the war between Ukraine and Russia. This is not the appropriate forum for that.”

Watch full interview here:

He said on 19 September we will have the General Assembly of the UN and that’s the place for us to discuss the war.

“That’s the place for us to try to discuss peace. That’s the place for us to call Putin and Zelensky in a negotiation table because no one wants war. Everybody is against war. We want peace. So it’s necessary for us to establish a conversation policy so that we can try to convince the two presidents for Russia and Ukraine that the war is not the solution for anything and that the dialogue, the diplomacy and a table of dialogue could help much more,” said the President.

He said that Brazil’s position has been very clear from the beginning on the war efforts.

“From the beginning, Brazil has been saying that we do not want to participate in the war efforts. Brazil wants to participate in the peace effort. We want to try to negotiate as also India, thinks like that, China, thinks like that. Many other countries think like Brazil, and so that’s why we believe that it’s very important that the war issue should not be included in the document, in the declaration from the G20. That’s very important,” said Lula da Silva.

He said otherwise people would go to war and then we lose and waste time instead of discussing the problems that involve nine billion inhabitants, the hunger that is affecting 735 million people, unemployment of millions of people. And we stay here discussing something that is not our top priority.

“And so I believe that it was very important, the decision that was made to not to allow that the war would come in into our declaration. The declaration is very serious, minded. It’s a mandatory reading for all of us that participated in the G20, and I hope that it serves as a guideline, as a roadmap, so that we can, in Rio next year to do something even better,” said the Brazilian President.

He said now is the time for G20 to target actual policies and commit to make things change rather than just discuss, talk philosophy.

“Now we have to start to go to actual policies. Now we’re going to go to a phase that G20 doesn’t have to stay anymore, just discussing and philosophy. No, we have to take commitments to make things change, to do things. The climate change issue is very serious. Mind that we have to do something about it. Brazil is taking the commitment of reaching 2030 with zero deforestation. We have already ended hunger in Brazil once in the past, and now we have 33 million that are in hunger once again,” said the President.

When asked if this consensus in a way is a win for New Delhi and establishes India as a rising power in an increasingly divided world, he said, “India will always be a power because a country that has tremendous 1000 year culture, is a country that was already colonised, a country that managed to get its Independence…. India is always a country that you have to take very seriously, very respected..”

He said what’s happening with the climate change around the world is not a joke and most certain thing that exists today is that we are lacking the responsibility when we deal with the issue.

“If someone still has doubts that the climate, nothing will happen with the climate, I can reassure you that the most certain thing that exists today is that we are lacking with responsibility when we deal with the climate change and we’re being the victim of the lack of attention of humanity,” he added.

“…We still have time. We have to take care of the planet. I believe that this meeting will give a very good guideline to all countries so that we can manage to put in practice a good policy, so that we can take care with great care of our planet Earth, of their forest, of its water, so that we can live well,” said Lula.

On India’s G20 agenda and the progress that has been made so far, Lula said, “I think it was an extraordinary, the India agenda that they developed and the promotion of 60 debates or more in different cities in Brazil. Many ministers came to these meetings. We had the health minister, we had the mines and energy minister from Brazil, we had the science and technology minister, the enormous amount. The labor minister came here, and then the finance minister came to these meetings. So these hundreds of meetings involving thousands of people is a new way that India is teaching us that it’s not surface for the presidents of the countries to participate. It’s necessary for us to involve the government as a whole and that we should involve the people that should participate in the debate. We learned a lot. Since we’re going to host next year the G20 in Brazil, we will take from India many teachings so that we can have a G20 meeting as productive as we had here in India.”

When asked how did Brazil and others prevail upon the European and the G7 countries, who seemed intent on having their way with the language vis-a-vis Ukraine, to ensure that there was consensus on the declaration, Lula said, “Well, this is already a majority that is being formed within the countries. On the BRICS, for example, we didn’t discuss the war during the BRICS Summit meeting. We thought that there’s other forum to discuss the war, and we could bring to India a debate, a discussion that has more consequence in Europe because they’re involved directly in the war, and the US is also directly involved in the war. But the other countries are not involved directly in the war. The other countries are involved in a policy…” 

On his visit to New Delhi and the first day at G20 Summit, he said, “…this G20 is a G20 that is exceptionally very well organised. We had, I would say, a lot of work. I arrived last night, and today we had two sessions that were hard work, and we had some other parallel events that were also very important. We launched a commitment together with Prime Minister, Modi, and President Biden, with Argentina, with the Indonesia commitment to follow biofuel policy that is very strong so that we can fight the greenhouse gas effect so that we can diminish the use of oil and try to use biofuel. So that was very important. This initiative, this commitment, that was assumed by all the presidents that participated together with Prime Minister, Modi. I am convinced that we will come out of this meeting with some guidelines where the countries, what would they have to do from here onwards so that we can diminish the inequality between the peoples, inequality amongst the countries so that the world could have lived in a better way and above all, so that we can confront the climate issue with great responsibility.”