Canadian Secretary of State Chrystia Freeland speaks to reporters outside the US Trade Representative’s office in Washington, U.S. August 28, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo
WASHINGTON, April 22 – The group of 20 major economies cannot function effectively as long as Russia remains a member, Canada’s finance minister said at meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Ukraine on Friday after a week of protests against Moscow’s war in Ukraine Washington.
Disagreement over Russia’s presence at the meetings was seen throughout the week, with officials from the US, Canada, Britain and other Western countries staging strikes for three days in a row whenever Russian officials spoke. Continue reading
G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Washington on Wednesday were unable to agree on their traditional communiqué outlining economic policy goals as Russia blocked strong words condemning its invasion of Ukraine.
The IMF Steering Committee and the World Bank-IMF Development Committee have also failed to make joint statements. Continue reading
“The G20 cannot function effectively with Russia at the table,” Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said at a news conference with Ukraine’s Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko in Washington.
“Russia has no place at the table of countries united to maintain global economic prosperity,” Freeland said, adding that Russia violated longstanding international rules by invading southern Ukraine. “You can’t be a poacher and a game warden at the same time.”
The tensions have questioned the effectiveness of the G20, which includes Western countries that have accused Moscow of war crimes in Ukraine, as well as China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, which have not joined Western-led sanctions on the conflict.
This year’s G20 host country Indonesia remains optimistic that progress can be made despite tensions on a number of issues, Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told Reuters in an interview.
“Even with an exit, we all agree” on the substance of the work that needs to be done, Indrawati said.
Indrawati said she was more focused on technical work on the “grassroots” underlying issues such as strengthening a common G20 debt framework for poor countries and creating a new financing mechanism for future pandemic needs than issuing a communiqué at the current stage .
With more G20 finance meetings scheduled for July and October, and a leaders’ summit in November, Indrawati said there was plenty of time to continue progress.
“If there is no forum at all, then the world will be in a much worse place,” with each country determining its policies without regard to others.
Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent, has been a passionate advocate for Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in late February. Continue reading
On Thursday, she addressed Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov directly, who was attending an IMF meeting virtually, saying his attendance was “perverse and absurd” as “your war is making us poorer,” according to a source. Continue reading
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation”.
Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal in Washington and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Edited by Chizu Nomiyama, Paul Simao and Chris Reese