The leaders of China and Russia plan to attend the November G20 summit, their host said on Thursday, setting up a high-profile showdown with US President Joe Biden.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo told Bloomberg in an interview that he received assurances from Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin that they would attend the conference, scheduled for November on the Indonesian island of Bali.
“Xi Jinping will come. President Putin also told me he will come,” he said, according to Bloomberg.
The presence of the two authoritarian leaders will raise the stakes for the summit, which is the first G20 summit since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions over the Taiwan issue.
Neither Putin nor Xi attended last year’s G20 in Rome. Xi has only recently started traveling outside mainland China as the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.
The White House has not formally announced Biden’s trip to Asia for the summit, but officials say he is expected to attend.
US and Chinese officials have been working quietly to organize the first face-to-face meeting between Biden and Xi since Biden took office, with an eye on the November series of summits in Asia: the G20 in Bali, a meeting of Southeast leaders. Asia in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have deteriorated in recent weeks following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
China has increased military exercises and weapons testing and closed certain channels of communication with the United States.
During their last phone call, Biden and Xi agreed to work for a face-to-face meeting. Biden is an advocate of regular meetings with his foreign counterparts, even when tensions are high.
Biden and his advisers have been in talks for months about how to approach the G20 should Putin attend, and it was the subject of discussion among other world leaders at the G7 summit held in Germany earlier this summer and at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit ( NATO) in Brussels in March.
At the G7 meeting in particular, the leaders discussed ways to demonstrate a united front against Russia at the November conference, according to officials.
Biden said Russia should be expelled from the G20, and senior members of his administration walked out of G20 events where Russian officials were present.
But the boycott of the G20 summit was not seriously considered, as Biden and his team did not want to appear to be handing over the table to Putin.
Instead, the US and other G7 nations encouraged Indonesia to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a guest participant in a show of support for Ukraine.
In April, finance ministers from several nations, including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, walked out of a closed-door session of the G20 in Washington as the Russian delegate began his prepared remarks, a show of protest against Moscow for its invasion. from Ukraine.
Prior to the meeting, US officials had said that Yellen would not participate in certain sessions of the meeting that included Russia.
At a meeting of G20 foreign ministers last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken challenged his counterparts to take a tougher line on Russia, saying that for the G20 to remain relevant, it must hold Moscow to account. by the invasion.
Source: CNN Brasil
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