'Double standards clearly evident': Jaishankar's dig at West over Ukraine, Gaza

External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar on Thursday took a dig at the West over the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and said peace can enable development, but peace cannot be facilitated by threatening development. He made the remarks while speaking at the G20 Foreign Ministers' meeting in New York. In his remarks, Jaishankar said this has made energy and other essentials more uncertain in an economically fragile situation, which is helping no one. The only way out, he said, is through dialogue and diplomacy.

"Our focus today is on the correlation between international peace and global development. In recent times, that is well established, as both deteriorated in parallel," Jaishankar said. "The costs, especially to the Global South, in terms of energy, food, and fertilizer security, were starkly demonstrated by ongoing conflicts, particularly in Ukraine and Gaza. Apart from jeopardising supplies and logistics, access and cost themselves became pressure points on nations."

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'International situation volatile'

Jaishankar on Thursday also stressed that the international situation is both 'politically and economically volatile'. However, the G20 members need to strengthen the stability, giving it a "more positive direction that is best done by undertaking dialogue and diplomacy, by firmly combating terrorism, and by appreciating the need for stronger energy and economic security".

"A persistent threat to development is that perennial disruptor of peace, terrorism. It is imperative that the world display neither tolerance nor accommodation to terrorist activities," he said.

"Given the extensive networking among terrorists, those who act against them on any front actually render a larger service to the international community as a whole. As we confront conflict, economic pressures, and terrorism, the limitations of multilateralism and the United Nations in particular are visible."

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'Can't escape this reality'

Earlier, Jaishankar also took a veiled dig at US President Donald Trump amid a row over tariffs and his move on H-1B visas, and said that the world requires a global workforce and countries cannot escape from this reality. He made the remarks while speaking at an event hosted by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) on the margins of the UN General Assembly session in New York.

"Where that global workforce is to be housed and located may be a matter of a political debate. But there's no getting away. If you look at demand and you look at demographics, demands cannot be met in many countries purely out of national demographics," Jaishankar said.

"This is a reality. You cannot run away from this reality. So how do we create a more acceptable, contemporary, efficient model of a global workforce, which is then located in a distributed, global workplace? I think this is a very big question today which the international economy has to address," he added.