The G20 summit is "very much a collaborative forum" and "not the arena for power politics", India's foreign minister says.
China's President Xi Jinping skipping this week's G20 summit in New Delhi is not unusual and will not affect negotiations to produce a consensus communique, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says.
The September 9-10 summit of leaders of the world's richest countries is being held in the context of a "very turbulent" global environment and expectations from G20 to find solutions to some of the world's pressing problems are "very high", he told the ANI news agency.
Sherpas, or country representatives, of the G20 members are negotiating to build a consensus and arrive at a declaration at the summit in New Delhi, Jaishankar said on Wednesday.
Jaishankar also played down a threat from his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov - who will represent Moscow at the summit in President Vladimir Putin's place - that Russia will block the summit's final declaration unless it reflects Moscow's position on Ukraine and other crises.
He said countries try to maximise their negotiating positions and people should not "prejudge" the outcome.
"I am confident that every one of the G20 coming to Delhi will understand the responsibility that they bear...that the other 180 countries of the world are looking to them to set directions and that they cannot afford to fail them."
The G20 is "very much a collaborative forum" and "not the arena for power politics", Jaishankar told ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
"Today, the expectations of the world are very high in terms of what the G20 is able to produce, and produce in terms of meeting the challenges of the world."
G20 groups the 20 major economies of the world but it has been divided due to differences over the war in Ukraine.
The absence of Putin and Xi as well as divisions over the war mean it would be difficult to arrive at a consensus Leaders Declaration at the summit, analysts and officials have said.
Jaishankar said leaders had skipped summits in the past and Xi doing so was not unusual and had nothing to do with India.
India-China relations have been frozen since a deadly military clash on their Himalayan frontier in June 2020 and analysts said Xi giving the summit a miss was a new setback to ties between the Asian giants.
But Xi's absence could also be a signal of his narrative of 'East is rising, and the West is falling', as well as showing solidarity with Putin, said Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist at the Australian National University.
China will be represented by Premier Li Qiang at the summit and Jaishankar noted that a "country's position is obviously reflected by whoever is the representative".
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