G20 foreign ministers end Atlanta talks without consensus on key issues, chairman’s statement to replace joint communique
Top diplomats from the world’s largest economies wrapped up two days of talks in Atlanta on Saturday without agreement on several critical global security issues, with divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine overshadowing the meeting and a chairman’s statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to summarise the discussions instead of a joint communique.
Top diplomats from the Group of 20 largest world economies have wrapped up two days of talks in Atlanta without reaching consensus on several critical global security issues, after divisions, notably over Russia’s war in Ukraine, overshadowed the start of the meeting, the Associated Press reported on Saturday.
As a result, the group will not release a joint communique. Instead, a chairman’s statement summarising the talks will be issued by United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chaired the meeting, according to diplomats who attended and spoke to the Associated Press.
Rubio had opened the talks on Friday with an appeal for unity, but the meeting quickly ran into the disagreement that would define it. He cancelled the traditional group photograph of the foreign ministers after European diplomats objected to the inclusion of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and threatened to boycott or walk out of the snapshot that usually kicks off such gatherings.
Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, attending a G20 meeting as a guest for the first time, told reporters on Friday that he was not surprised by the failure to reach consensus. “We have wars going on, and we have participants in those wars around the table, so it’s very difficult to agree on a common line,” he said.
Other participants, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the closed-door talks, said all sides had nevertheless agreed to try to overcome their differences despite the long odds, and to work to make next month’s G20 leaders’ summit, hosted by President Donald Trump in Florida, a success.
Those diplomats also said a chairman’s statement had long been the plan, given the depth of the differences among the attendees. The disagreements covered the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US-Israeli war against Iran, US tariffs, and Chinese actions in the South China Sea, according to the Associated Press account carried by Arab News, The Week and the Korea Times.
The United States had said a top priority for the meeting was resolving differences over freedom of navigation, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, the Black Sea and the South China Sea. Rubio was due to host talks on Saturday with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan before leading the final G20 event, a discussion on supply chains that would examine those same waterways.
On the sidelines, Rubio met the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, whose country has been a key voice in regional diplomacy. The meetings underlined how the Atlanta gathering sat at the intersection of several separate crises, rather than dealing with any one of them in isolation.
In a separate development reported alongside the talks, the US State Department announced on Friday that it had approved a proposed 2.1-billion-dollar sale of Patriot air-defence interceptors for Ukraine. The announcement came as the war in Ukraine continued to divide the G20 table, with Russia’s position described by participants as unyielding, and its opposition to Poland’s membership of the group also noted in the Associated Press reporting.
What happens next now turns to the leaders’ summit in Florida next month. The chairman’s statement from Atlanta will record what was discussed, but it will not carry the weight of a joint communique agreed by all members. The test for the Florida meeting will be whether the willingness diplomats described in Atlanta to keep working through differences can produce agreement at leaders’ level, or whether the same divisions over Ukraine, Iran, tariffs and maritime security reappear in sharper form.
