India will attend virtual Brics Summit next week, says Jaishankar will represent
The decision to nominate the external affairs minister to participate in the meeting was part of a balancing act, people familiar with the matter said
NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar will represent India at a virtual Brics Summit convened by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva next week to discuss US President Donald Trump’s trade policy and to rally the leaders of emerging economies.
Brazil is the current chair of the Brics grouping that also includes China, Russia and Iran.
Lula telephoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month to discuss the fallout of Trump imposing 50% tariffs on both countries. At the time, the two leaders pledged to deepen bilateral cooperation in areas such as trade and energy.
“The Brazilian chair of Brics has called for a virtual meeting on September 8,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a weekly media briefing.
“From our side, it will be the external affairs minister who will be participating in [the meeting]. This Brics Summit is at the leaders’ level,” he said, without giving further details.
Reports from Brazil suggested that Lula intends to discuss the tariffs imposed by Trump and forge closer cooperation with the leaders of the other emerging economies in Brics in support of multilateralism. However, Brazilian officials have also said that the Brics meeting should not be perceived as an anti-US summit.
Trump has imposed some of his highest tariffs yet on India and Brazil. He has linked Brazil’s penalties to demands for ending the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of an attempted coup, and penalised India for Russian oil purchases.
The Brics Summit follows the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit at Tianjin in China that witnessed several meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
People familiar with the matter said the decision to nominate the external affairs minister to participate in the meeting was part of a balancing act at a time when the US harbours suspicions about some members of Brics being behind a de-dollarisation effort and the promotion of trade settlement in national currencies. The Indian side has repeatedly said it is not part of any efforts at Brics to replace the US dollar with other currencies.
During their phone call last month, Modi and Lula agreed on deepening the bilateral strategic partnership in areas such as trade, energy, technology, defence and health. Lula also emphasised their commitment to “defending multilateralism”.
In this context, Lula announced he would visit India early next year. Brazilian vice president Geraldo Alckmin will also travel to India in October to participate in a meeting of a trade monitoring mechanism, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders to discuss cooperation in trade energy and critical minerals.
