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A motorist rides past a hoarding decorated with flowers to welcome G20 foreign ministers in New Delhi, India, March 1, 2023.

REUTERS/Amit Dave

What We’re Watching: Tense G-20 talks in India, Finland’s fence-building, China’s economic activity, Chicago’s mayoral runoff

An awkward G-20 summit in Delhi

When G-20 foreign ministers met in New Delhi on Thursday, it was, as expected, an awkward affair. While India, the current G-20 chair, had hoped that the bloc would focus on issues of importance to the Global South, like climate change and the global food crisis, the agenda was disrupted by US-Russia bickering over the war in Ukraine, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called "unprovoked and unjustified war", while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the West for not doing enough to extend a deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports that will soon expire. Of course, focusing on anything else was going to be a tall order when the top diplomats of the US, China, and Russia were all in the same room. (President Biden and Xi Jinping last met at the G-20 summit in Bali in November, though there was no bilateral meeting between the US and Russia.) In a sign of how fractured Washington's relationship remains with these two states, Blinken on Wednesday again urged Beijing not to send lethal weapons to Russia and canned China’s peace plan for Ukraine. As for US-Russia relations … need we say more? India, which has gone to painstaking lengths to maintain its neutral status over the past year, says it thinks the group can get stuff done. But at a meeting last month of G-20 financial heads, the group couldn’t even agree on a joint statement.

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A Rohingya refugee family rests in a temporary shelter after a fire destroyed a Rohingya refugee camp in New Delhi, India.

Reuters

Hard Numbers: Rohingya unwelcome in Delhi, Thailand’s forgotten battle, Abbas under fire, the few remaining anti-Trump Republicans

1,100: Hours after India’s Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs said that Rohingya refugees from Myanmar residing in New Delhi would be given free housing, Amit Shah – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest aide and a man known for his Hindu nationalist politics – said that the refugees would not be given apartments. Shah called the 1,100 Rohingya living in India’s capital “illegal migrants” and threatened to deport them.
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Hard Numbers: Colombian violence, Ottawa vs Tehran, New Delhi’s weekend curfew, anti nuclear war consensus

23: At least 23 people have been killed in northern Colombia near the Venezuelan border in recent days amid violent clashes between rival guerrilla groups ELN and FARC rebels, who rejected the 2016 Colombian peace process. Among other things, the ELN and the FARC are vying for control of crucial drug trafficking routes.

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What We're Watching: Iran plays hard to get, China gets up in India's grid, Dominicans build a wall

Iran rules out nuclear talks… for now: Iran has reportedly rejected an offer to join direct talks with the US and EU over its nuclear program, saying it won't start the conversation until sanctions on Iran's economy are eased. To be clear, this does NOT mean that prospects for reviving the Iran nuclear deal are dead. Europeans and the Biden administration want a return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, and Iran certainly needs the economic boost that would come from a removal of sanctions. But Tehran is going to try to maximize its leverage before any talks begin, especially since this is a sensitive election year in in the country. Iran's leaders are going to play hard to get for a while longer before edging their way back to the bargaining table. Still, it's high stakes diplomacy here between parties that have almost no mutual trust — and one misstep could throw things off track quickly.

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Farm to (negotiating) table in India

In recent days, tens of thousands of protesters have descended on the capital of the world's fifth largest economy as part of a political fight that directly affects the livelihoods of more than 600 million people.

This drama is unfolding in India, where a series of reforms to decades-old agriculture laws has touched off a major political crisis. Farmers streaming in from the country's breadbasket regions have blocked roads and set up encampments in New Delhi to demand that the government scrap the new laws. Yesterday, they called a nationwide strike.

In a country where nearly 60 percent of the population of 1.4 billion people depends on farming to earn a living, this is an issue with huge repercussions for the country's popular prime minister, Narendra Modi.

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