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Group of 20 summit South Africa The event is set to end on Sunday with another diplomatic controversy involving the United States after the host country refused to hand over the bloc’s rotating presidency to a junior American official.
US boycotts two-day meeting of leaders of rich and emerging economies johannesburg Over the Trump administration’s claims that South Africa is carrying out violent atrocities against its African white minority.
America has to take charge g20 President for 2026 – and says he will host his summit in the Presidential donald trumpGolf Club in Doral, Florida. But South Africa insisted that the traditional handover ceremony at the end of the summit would probably not take place because the US only wanted to send a diplomatic official from its embassy, calling it an insult to the South African president. Cyril Ramaphosa,
South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said, “The United States is a member of the G20 and if they want to represent, they can still send anyone to the right level.” “It’s a summit of leaders. The right level is the head of state, a special envoy appointed by the president of that country, or it could even be a minister.”
South Africa said the handover would take place at a later date, possibly at its Foreign Ministry building.
deepening crack
It was not clear whether any US officials would attend the summit on its closing day. The diplomatic rift between the US and South Africa deepened this week after Ramaphosa said the US had changed its mind and wanted to attend the summit at the last minute. The White House denied this and said US officials would only attend the formal handover.
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said Ramaphosa was “running his mouth a little bit against the United States and the President of the United States.”
South Africa broke with tradition at the first G20 summit in Africa by issuing a leaders’ declaration on the opening day of talks on Saturday. Announcements usually come at the end of the summit.
The announcement came after opposition from the US, which has been critical of the South African agenda for the grouping which mainly focuses on climate change and global wealth inequality. Argentina said it protested the announcement after Trump ally Argentine President Javier Meili also did not attend the summit.
Other G20 countries, including China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan and Canada, supported the declaration, which called for greater global attention primarily to issues that particularly affect poor countries, such as the need for financial support for their recovery efforts after climate-related disasters, finding ways to reduce their debt levels and supporting their transition to green energy sources.
G20 is ‘struggling’
South Africa supported the summit and the declaration as a victory for international cooperation in the face of the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy. However, G20 declarations are general agreements made by member states that are not binding, and their long-term impact has been questioned.
Furthermore, while the declaration included many of South Africa’s priorities, some concrete proposals did not make it into the final document. There was no mention of a new international panel on wealth inequality, similar to the UN-appointed intergovernmental panel on climate change, which South Africa and others had demanded.
Some questioned the effectiveness of the G20 in resolving the most major global crises, such as the Russia–Ukraine war and tensions in the Middle East.
There was only one reference to Ukraine in the general call to end global conflicts in the 122-point G20 declaration and the summit made no difference to the nearly four-year war, even as the leaders or high-level delegations of all the major European countries, the EU and Russia sat in the same room in Johannesburg.
French President Emmanuel Macron said “the first-ever meeting on the African continent is an important milestone,” but added that the bloc is “struggling to create a common standard on geopolitical crises.”
A symbolic summit for poor countries
Still, some activists said the Johannesburg summit was an important symbolic moment for the G20, made up of 19 countries, the European Union and the African Union, as it focused more attention than ever on issues affecting poor countries.
“This is the first meeting of world leaders in history where the inequality emergency was put at the center of the agenda,” said Max Lawson of Oxfam, an international non-profit that works to reduce global poverty.
“The importance of addressing development priorities from an African perspective cannot be overstated,” said Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndiatwah, whose southern African country of three million people was one of more than 20 small countries invited as guests to attend the summit alongside G20 members.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the G20 summit in South Africa: https://apnews.com/hub/g20-summit