Beijing/Moscow/New Delhi: A day after the BRICS nations – China, South Africa, Brazil and Russia, commended India’s BRICS Chairship in 2021 and expressed their gratitude to the government and people of India for holding the XIII BRICS Summit, China today stated that it recognizes and appreciates India’s contributions during its chairmanship in the past year. China takes over the BRICS chairmanship from India next year.
The theme of the BRICS summit, that concluded yesterday with the New Delhi Declaration, was “BRICS@15: Intra-BRICS cooperation for continuity, consolidation and consensus”, and the summit was attended by President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, President of China Xi Jinping, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, and President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa.
Russian President Putin too in course of his speech, had acknowledged that despite the special conditions related to the coronavirus pandemic, “India as the chair has done everything it could to ensure the progressive development of strategic partnership of the BRICS countries without any setbacks”.
Also read: As challenges abound, BRICS has a long way to go
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who chaired the 13th BRICS Summit virtually, pointed out that this year, despite the challenges posed by COVID, more than 150 BRICS meetings and programs were organized, out of which more than 20 were at the Ministerial level.
COVID-19 pandemic had remained a major topic during the Summit, and the members reaffirmed their strong commitment to continue their ongoing efforts in supporting countries around the world to combat the pandemic through financing, donation, local production and facilitating export of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and other life saving equipment.
However, it was the development in Afghanistan that concerned all members. The New Delhi Declaration called for refraining from violence and settling the situation by peaceful means in Afghanistan. “We stress the need to contribute to fostering an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue so as to ensure stability, civil peace, law and order in the country. We condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attacks near the Hamid Karzai Kabul International Airport that resulted in a large number of deaths and injuries. We underscore the priority of fighting terrorism, including preventing attempts by terrorist organisations to use Afghan territory as terrorist sanctuary and to carry out attacks against other countries, as well as drug trade within Afghanistan. We emphasise the need to address the humanitarian situation and to uphold human rights, including those of women, children and minorities,” the Declaration stated.
Modi had noted that while the the leaders discussed recent developments in Afghanistan, there was convergence of views on the threat posed by growth of terrorism and extremism, and all BRICS partners agreed to accelerate implementation of the BRICS Action Plan on Counter-Terrorism.
During the meeting, Putin had cautioned that “what is happening around the world remains very tense. Global security is subjected to serious trials and the system of strategic stability has noticeably deteriorated. Far from being settled, long-standing regional conflicts are flaring up with renewed force”. While talking about the withdrawal of the US and their allies from Afghanistan, the Russian President had said that that had led to a new crisis situation, and it remains unclear how it will affect regional and global security.
“Understandably, just like its BRICS partners, Russia has consistently advocated the establishment of long-awaited peace and stability in Afghanistan, where the people have been fighting for many decades and have earned the right to independently determine what their state will be like.
At the same time, we are not interested in Afghanistan remaining a threat to neighbouring countries or having terrorism and illegal drug trafficking coming from the Afghan territory threaten us. We are interested in stopping the migration flow and we want the Afghans to be able to live a peaceful and dignified life in their own country,” he had stated.
Xi had called for strengthening political and security cooperation in the spirit of “fairness and justice”. “We need to consolidate the BRICS strategic partnership, support each other on issues concerning our respective core interests, better coordinate our position on major international and regional issues, and send out an even bigger, collective voice of BRICS countries,” he had said.
– global bihari bureau
