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Other leaders are also skipping the G20 summit, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Argentine President Javier Milei, but they have sent delegations to represent them in the talks.
US Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the US would send a diplomatic delegation to the handover ceremony of G20 at the end of the event, but won’t participate in talks. The handover is meant to recognize that next year’s G20 will be hosted by the US. It’s scheduled to take place at President Donald Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida.
Trump has cited his claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers as the reason for the US boycott. South Africa vehemently rejected this claim.
Trump has repeatedly targeted South Africa for criticism since he returned to office. He held a tense meeting with Ramaphosa at the White House in May, when he confronted the South African leader with baseless claims of widespread violence against Afrikaners, who are descendants of Dutch, French and German settlers who first came to South Africa in the 17th century.
President Ramaphosa has insisted that the Summit will issue a joint declaration, despite pressure from Washington not to do so. A South African G20 official said earlier this week that Washington had sent diplomatic communication to South Africa advising that that there should be no declaration adopted at the summit, because the American delegation wasn’t there and therefore there would be no consensus.
Instead, the US wants a toned-down statement from South Africa only to cap the summit, which is a culmination of more than 120 meetings that Africa’s most advanced economy has hosted since it took over the G20’s rotating presidency for this year.
South Africa, which is the first African nation to hold the rotating presidency, is hoping to use its summit to make progress on issues especially affecting poor countries. That includes mitigating the impact of climate change and weather-related disasters, easing debt burdens for developing countries and confronting global wealth inequality.
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https://trendsnafrica.com/us-to-boycott-g20-says-no-official-to-take-part-in-deliberations/
Other leaders are also skipping the G20 summit, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Argentine President Javier Milei, but they have sent delegations to represent them in the talks.
