<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, met this Thursday in Johannesburg with his EU and Norwegian counterparts, on the margins of the G20 meeting, to address the crisis in Ukraine after the change of course of the United States and the recent meeting of the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Saudi Arabia.</strong></h4> “The EU countries participating in the G20 together with Norway have met this morning before the G20. We have a common position of support for a fair and lasting peace in Ukraine, in favour of multilateralism and international law,” declared the head of Spanish diplomacy through social networks. Albares is in South Africa to attend, until Friday, the first meeting of foreign ministers of the G20 (group of developed and emerging countries) under the rotating presidency of South Africa, in which they will evaluate the major challenges of world geopolitics. The meeting brings together the foreign ministers (or their representatives) of the G20 members, plus the African Union and the European Union. Despite not belonging to the G20, Spain has participated since 2010 as a permanent guest (it is the only country with this status). Before the G20 plenary, the foreign ministers of Spain, Germany, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and Norway met, as well as the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, to agree on a common position on the war in Ukraine, to defend “a just and lasting peace” and to support multilateralism and International Law. Speaking to the press on his arrival in Johannesburg, Albares called for “multilateralism and dialogue as opposed to imposition and confrontation” and assured that Spain would show the G20 its “commitment to peace, democracy and human rights”. In addition, the minister held a bilateral meeting with his South African counterpart, Ronald Lamola, with whom he discussed “the excellent bilateral relations, the challenges in Africa, the situation in Ukraine and the Middle East” and agreed on the defence of “peace, multilateralism and sustainable development”. The meeting was opened by the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, and is being held for two days at the Nasrec Exhibition Centre in Johannesburg under the motto “Solidarity, equality and sustainability”. Although the G20 is a forum of a fundamentally economic nature and, therefore, does not usually address geopolitical or security issues, the meeting will be marked by the absence of Marco Rubio, who justified his absence with a very brief phrase on social networks: “South Africa is doing very bad things” (specifically, due to the dispute between Trump and Ramaphosa over South Africa's national laws on land expropriation, equality policies and South Africa's stance on Israel and Gaza). The one who does attend the meeting (as he has done regularly, since the invasion of Ukraine) is Sergei Lavrov. Rubio and the Russian Foreign Minister held their first bilateral meeting in Riyadh on February 18th with the aim of normalizing diplomatic relations between the two powers and seeking a solution to the war in Ukraine.
