Delhi invited to G7 London summit in May

is among the guest countries invited to join parts of the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ meeting to be hosted by the UK next month, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said on Tuesday (20).

The meeting in London will be the first in-person summit of the foreign ministers of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, US and UK as well as the European Union (EU). It will be held in what has been dubbed a Covid-secure way between May 3 and 5.

It is also likely to include India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar for parts of the summit, with the country included among the guest nations from the Indo-Pacific region.

The UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab confirmed the plans for the meeting in parliament on Tuesday.

“The meeting of G7 Foreign and Development Ministers next month is an opportunity to show how the world’s biggest democracies work together to ensure equitable access to vaccines, build back better from the pandemic, support girls in the poorest countries get a good quality education and agree ambitious action to tackle climate change,” Raab said.

The last G7 foreign ministers meeting took place in April 2019 at Dinard and Saint-Malo in France. For the first in-person meeting in over two years, the FCDO said organisers will put strict Covid-secure measures in place, including daily testing to ensure the health and wellbeing of all staff, attendees, and the public.

The FCDO said the meeting was an opportunity to revitalise in-person diplomacy. It will look to set up a shared approach among the world’s leading democracies on equitable vaccine access, agree global girls’ education targets, goals on climate finance and measures to prevent famine and food insecurity.