NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapped up on Sunday a G20 summit that played several moments in the diplomatic spotlight.
G20 nations have been riven over the Ukraine war since Moscow's attack last year, with Russian President Vladimir Putin skipping the summit entirely to dodge political opprobrium.
On Sunday, Modi formally closed the summit by passing on a ceremonial gavel to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country will take the bloc's presidency in December.
"We cannot let geopolitical issues sequester the G20 agenda of discussions," Lula said, an implicit reference to wrangling over the Ukraine war.
"We have no interest in a divided G20. We need peace and cooperation instead of conflict."
Indian civil servant Amitabh Kant wrote on X that the compromise text on Ukraine had involved "over 200 hours of non-stop negotiations, 300 bilateral meetings (and) 15 drafts".
It backed a target of tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030, while committing only to a "phasedown" of coal "in line with national circumstances".
The climate outcomes were "insufficient", French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday, saying the world must "phase out coal very rapidly and much more quickly than today".
Modi, who marked the summit as India's diplomatic coming of age and is pushing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, celebrated the accession of the 55-member African Union to the G20.
As the G20, the grouping included 19 countries and the European Union, representing 85 per cent of the world GDP, with South Africa its only member state from the continent.
Modi proposed another G20 leaders' meeting in November by video-link, opening up the possibility of Putin joining -- along with China's Xi Jinping, who skipped the summit with the Asian giants at loggerheads over territorial and other issues.
Lula said Putin would be free to attend next year's event in Rio de Janeiro, despite Brazil being a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Others came together on the summit sidelines, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holding face-to-face talks with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday following a decade-long rift between the two countries.
World leaders had earlier joined Modi to pay their respects to revered Indian independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, taking off their shoes at the site of his cremation, where normal footwear is forbidden as a mark of respect. — AFP
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