• US boycott over alleged persecution of white South Africans.
• South African president achieved consensus for declaration.
• Threat of climate change mentioned despite US opposition.

Group of 20 leaders adopted a declaration addressing the climate crisis and other global challenges on Saturday over US objections, prompting the White House to accuse South Africa of weaponising its leadership of the group this year.

The declaration, which was drafted without input from the United States, “can’t be renegotiated,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson told reporters, reflecting strains between Pretoria and US President Donald Trump’s administration, which boycotted the event.

“We had the entire year of working towards this adoption and the past week has been quite intense,” spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said.

Hours later, the White House said Ramaphosa was “refusing to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency” after initially saying he would pass the gavel to ‘an empty chair.'”

“This, coupled with South Africa’s push to issue a G20 Leaders Declaration, despite consistent and robust US objections, underscores the fact that they have weaponised their G20 presidency to undermine the G20’s founding principles,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. Trump looks forward to “restoring legitimacy” to the group next year, when the US holds the rotating presidency.

Ramaphosa, host of this weekend’s gathering of Group of 20 leaders in Johannesburg, had earlier said there was “overwhelming consensus” for a summit declaration.

But at the last minute, Argentina, whose far-right President Javier Milei is a close ally of Trump, quit the negotiations right before the envoys were about to adopt the draft text, South African officials said.

“Argentina, although it cannot endorse the declaration … remains fully committed to the spirit of cooperation that has defined the G20 since its conception,” its foreign minister Pablo Quirno said at the summit. Ramaphosa noted this, but went ahead with it anyway.

In explanation, Quirno said Argentina was concerned about how the document referred to geopolitical issues.

“Specifically it addresses the longstanding Middle East conflict in a manner that fails to capture its full complexity,” he said. The document mentions the conflict once, saying members agree to work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in … the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Declaration mentions climate change

Envoys from the G20 – which brings together the world’s major economies – drew up a draft leaders’ declaration on Friday without US involvement, four sources familiar with the matter said.

“It is a longstanding G20 tradition to issue only consensus deliverables, and it is shameful that the South African government is now trying to depart from this standard practice,” a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.

The declaration used the kind of language long disliked by the US administration: stressing the seriousness of climate change and the need to better adapt to it, praising ambitious targets to boost renewable energy and noting the punishing levels of debt service suffered by poor countries.

The mention of climate change was a snub to Trump, who doubts the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities. US officials had indicated they would oppose any reference to it in the declaration.

In opening remarks to the summit, Ramaphosa said: “We should not allow anything to diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency.”

His bold tone was a striking contrast to his subdued decorum during his visit to the White House in May, in which he endured Trump repeating a false claim that there was a genocide of white farmers in South Africa, brushing aside Ramaphosa’s efforts to correct his facts.

Trump said US officials would not attend the summit because of allegations, widely discredited, that the host country’s Black majority government persecutes its white minority.

Trump rejects South Africa’s G20 agenda

The summit came at a time of heightened tensions between world powers over Russia’s war in Ukraine and fraught climate negotiations at the COP30 in Brazil.

“While the G20 diversity sometimes presents challenges, it also underscores the importance of finding common ground,” Japan Cabinet Public Affairs Secretary Maki Kobayashi told Reuters.

Commenting on Argentina’s absence from the final envoy meeting to agree on the text, Magwenya said: “Argentina (had) been participating quite meaningfully … in all the deliberations,” then never showed up to endorse the declaration on Friday. He added: “We have what we call sufficient consensus.”

The US president had also rejected the host nation’s agenda of promoting solidarity and helping developing nations adapt to weather disasters, transition to clean energy and cut their excessive debt costs.

“This G20 is not about the US,” South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told public broadcaster SABC. “We are all equal members of the G20. What it means is that we need to take a decision. Those of us who are here have decided this is where the world must go.”

But in a sign of the many geopolitical fissures underlying the agreed text, EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen warned in a speech about “the weaponisation of dependencies” which she said “only creates losers”.

This was an apparent veiled reference to China’s export curbs on rare earths vital for the world’s energy transition, as well as defence and digital technology.

China’s Premier Li Qiang called for unity amongst the G20 during a speech at the summit on Saturday, saying that differences in interests among parties and shortcomings in global cooperation are key obstacles to international unity.

“The G20 should face up to these problems, explore solutions and promote a return to the right track of unity and cooperation,” Li said in a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry.

The South African presidency on Saturday reiterated its rejection of a US offer to send the US charge d’affaires for the G20 handover.

“The president will not hand over to a junior embassy official the presidency of the G20. It’s a breach of protocol that is not going to be accommodated,” Magwenya said.

Lamola later said that South Africa would assign a diplomat of the same rank as a charge d’affaires to hand over the G20 presidency at the Foreign Affairs Department.

• Plan also requires Ukraine to reduce its army and stay out of NATO.
• Western leaders say plan needs changes to protect Ukraine security.
• Zelensky warns of historic choice; Putin threatens more land seizures.

Ukrainian and US envoys will meet in Switzerland on Sunday along with European security chiefs to discuss Washington’s plan for ending the war with Russia, officials said, after Kyiv pushed back on proposals seen as favourable to Moscow.

US President Donald Trump has given Ukraine until November 27 to approve the plan to end the nearly four-year conflict, but Kyiv is seeking changes to a draft that accepts some of Moscow’s hardline demands.

Trump’s 28-point plan would require the invaded country to cede territory, cut its army, and pledge never to join NATO. He told reporters on Saturday it was not his final offer and he hoped to stop the fighting “one way or the other”.

Ukraine’s European allies, who were not included in drafting the agreement, said the plan requires “additional work” as they scrambled at the G20 summit in South Africa to come up with a counteroffer to strengthen Kyiv’s positions.

A US official told AFP that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff were scheduled to arrive in Geneva on Sunday for the talks, and that US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had already arrived there after meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv.

“We will have an informal pre-meeting tonight for dinner” with Ukrainian delegates, the US official said on Saturday.

Zelensky’s decree said the negotiations would include “representatives of the Russian Federation”, but there was no immediate confirmation from Russia whether it would join the talks.

Russian ‘representatives’ expected

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said “consultations will take place with partners regarding the steps needed to end the war,” after issuing a decree naming Ukraine’s delegation for the talks, led by his top aide Andriy Yermak.

“Our representatives know how to defend Ukraine’s national interests and what is necessary to prevent Russia from launching a third invasion”, having annexed Crimea in 2014 and mounted a full-scale offensive in 2022, he said.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the senior officials would meet in Geneva “to take things further forward”, stressing the importance of solid “security guarantees” for Ukraine under any settlement.

“The focus very much now is on Geneva tomorrow and whether we can make progress tomorrow morning,” he told the media on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg.

Starmer said his national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, would be in Geneva on Sunday. Italian diplomatic sources said their country was sending the prime minister’s national security advisor, Fabrizio Saggio.

Security officials from the EU, France and Germany will also attend, French President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference at the G20.

West says plan needs more ‘work’

Western leaders at the G20 summit said Saturday that the US plan was “a basis which will require additional work”.

“We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force. We are also concerned by the proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack,” the leaders of key European countries, as well as Canada and Japan, said in a joint statement.

Macron said the plan contained points that had to be more broadly discussed as they concerned European allies, such as Ukraine’s NATO ties and Russian frozen assets held in the EU.

“We all want peace, and we are agreed. We want the peace to be strong and lasting,” he said, insisting a settlement must “take into account the security of all Europeans”.

The European delegates in Geneva would aim “to put substance into the discussions and to reconcile all viewpoints”, he said.

Zelensky said Friday in an address to the nation that Ukraine faces one of the most challenging moments in its history, adding that he would propose “alternatives” to Trump’s proposal.

“The pressure on Ukraine is one of the hardest. Ukraine may face a very difficult choice: either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner,” Zelensky said, referring to a possible break with Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the blueprint could “lay the foundation” for a final peace settlement, but threatened more land seizures if Ukraine walked away from negotiations.

• EU says it supports agreement because it’s going in right direction.
• Efforts insufficient for keeping temperatures at1.5C: scientist.
• Climate bodies to review alignment of trade with climate action.
  

World governments agreed on Saturday to a compromise climate deal at the COP30 conference in Brazil that would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming but omit any mention of the fossil fuels driving it.

In securing the accord, countries attempted to demonstrate global unity in addressing climate change impacts even after the world’s biggest historic emitter, the United States, declined to send an official delegation.

But the agreement, which landed in overtime after two weeks of contentious negotiations in the Amazon city of Belem, also exposed rifts between wealthy and developing nations, as well as between those governments with opposing views on oil, gas and coal. After gaveling the deal through, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago acknowledged the talks had been tough.

“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand,” he said.

The European Union had been the main holdout for language on a transition away from fossil fuels, but ultimately agreed to drop it after a coalition of countries including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said it was off-limits.

“We should support (the deal) because at least it is going in the right direction,” the European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, told reporters before the deal was gaveled through.

Some countries had harsher words.

“A climate decision that cannot even say fossil fuels is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence,” said Panama’s climate negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey.

Finance boost

The deal launches a voluntary initiative to speed up climate action to help nations meet their existing pledges to reduce emissions, and calls for rich nations to at least triple the amount of money they provide to help developing countries adapt to a warming world by 2035.

Scientists have said existing national commitments to cut emissions have cut projected warming significantly, but are not enough to keep world temperatures from breaching 1.5C above industrial levels, a threshold that could unleash the worst impacts of climate change.

Developing countries have argued in the meantime that they urgently need funds to adapt to impacts that are already hitting, like rising sea levels and worsening heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms.

Avinash Persaud, Special Advisor to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral lender focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, said the accord’s focus on finance was important as climate impacts mount.

“But I fear the world still fell short on more rapid-release grants for developing countries responding to loss and damage. That goal is as urgent as it is hard,” he said.

Fossil fuel side text

The impasse between the European Union and the Arab Group of nations over fossil fuels had pushed the talks past a Friday deadline, triggering all-night negotiations before a compromise could be reached.

Correa do Lago said on Saturday morning that the presidency was issuing a side text on fossil fuels — as well as on protecting forests — keeping it out of the main accord because of the lack of consensus.

But he urged countries to keep discussing the issues.

“I know that most of you are tired, but as president of this conference, it is my duty to recognize some very important discussions that took place in Belem and that needs to continue during the Brazilian presidency, until the next COP, even if they are not reflected in this text we just approved,” he said.

Saturday’s agreement also launches a process for climate bodies to review how to align international trade with climate action, according to the deal text, amid concerns that rising trade barriers are limiting the adoption of clean technology.