Johannesburg, Aug. 22 (dpa/GNA) - Brazilian President Inácio Lula da Silva said Tuesday that the BRICS alliance of five emerging economies does not seek to be a counterweight to the G7 and G20.
Lula stressed that the group is not directed against others. Rather, it is about a better organization of the Global South, he wrote on Tuesday on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“The BRICS are not antithetical to the G7, the G20 or anyone else,” Lula wrote. «We want to organize ourselves as the Global South. We are important in the global debate and sit at the negotiating table on an equal footing with the European Union and the United States.”
The BRICS alliance opened a summit meeting on Tuesday that is expected to focus on the group’s expansion.
The alliance currently includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It now aims to become “BRICS plus” and take on numerous new members.
The member states still have to agree on admission criteria. It is also unclear when additional countries will be included. The meeting runs through Thursday.
China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to attend the summit in person.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Putin himself is due to take part via video link. Were he to attend in person, he would face arrest for alleged war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Meanwhile, in remarks transported via video link, Putin again justified the cancellation of the grain agreement with Ukraine with sharp criticism of the West and of Kiev.
None of the contractual conditions to facilitate the export of Russian grain and fertilizer had been met, Putin told the BRICS summit in South Africa.
“The commitments to Russia in this regard were simply ignored,” he claimed. Moscow would only lift the blockade of Ukrainian ports and return to the agreement once all Russian demands have been met, Putin asserted.
Russia, which has been waging an unprovoked full-scale military invasion against its neighbour Ukraine since February 2022, unilaterally pulled out of the year-long agreement that allowed the export of nearly 33 million tons of Ukrainian grain and other food products via the Black Sea despite international appeals.
The BRICS countries say that together they account for 42% of the world’s population, 30% of the global land area and 24% of global economic output.
The aim of expanding the group is the “search for alternatives” to the current global balance of power, according to South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor.
More than 30 other countries have confirmed their participation in the three-day meeting. In addition, 67 high-ranking politicians from Africa and the global South are invited, as are 20 representatives from the United Nations, the African Union and regional economic communities in Africa and others.
GNA