G20 leaders pay their respects at a Gandhi memorial on the final day of the summit in India
abcnews.go.comG20 leaders are paying their respects at a memorial site dedicated to Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi on the final day of this year's summit
NEW DELHI — G20 leaders paid their respects at a memorial site dedicated to Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi on Sunday — a day after the forum added a new member and reached agreements on a range of issues but softened their language on Russia's war in Ukraine.
India, this year’s Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations host, ended the first day of the summit with diplomatic wins. As the first session began, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the group was adding the African Union as a member — part of the Indian leader’s drive to uplift the Global South.
A few hours later, India announced that it was able to get the disparate group to sign off on a final statement, but only after softening language on the contentious issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
With these major agenda items taken care of, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and Japan’s Fumio Kishida, among others, shook hands Sunday and posed for photos with Modi at the Rajghat memorial site in New Delhi, which was decorated with orange and yellow flowers. Modi gifted the leaders shawls made of khadi, a handspun fabric that was promoted by Gandhi during India’s independence movement against the British.
In the months leading up to the leaders’ summit in New Delhi, India had been unable to find agreement on the wording about Ukraine, with Russia and China objecting even to language that they had agreed to at the 2022 G20 summit in Bali.
This year's final statement, released a day before the formal close of the summit, highlighted the “human suffering and negative
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