Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that he had a “very productive conversation” with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg.
The Prime Minister posted on X, saying: “A very productive conversation with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the G20 Johannesburg Summit.”
The meeting came after India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Guterres in New York on Nov. 13. Jaishankar said then on X that he had “valued his assessment of the current global order and its implications for multilateralism” and had “appreciated his perspectives on various regional hotspots.”
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the UN chief, earlier offered Guterres’ condolences to the government and people of India “for what happened there,” referring to a car-bomb attack near the Red Fort on Nov. 10.
PM Modi, attending his 12th G20 leaders’ summit, took part in the opening session on inclusive and sustainable economic growth, where he highlighted the idea of “Integral Humanism” as a way to balance progress with planetary concerns and said several decisions from the New Delhi Summit had been carried forward.
He praised the South African presidency’s work on skilled migration, tourism, food security, artificial intelligence, the digital economy, innovation and women’s empowerment, and called for a stronger voice for the Global South in global governance.
During his remarks, PM Modi proposed four G20 initiatives to promote inclusive, sustainable growth: a Global Traditional Knowledge Repository, a G20-Africa Skills Multiplier Initiative, a G20 Global Healthcare Response Team, and a G20 effort to counter the drug-terror nexus.
(IANS)