New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday said India not being invited at the G7 meeting in Canada is “yet another big diplomatic bungle” after the “blunder” of allowing the US to “mediate” between India and Pakistan.
Canada is hosting the summit from June 15 to 17 that is expected to deliberate on pressing challenges facing the globe including the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the situation in West Asia. For the first time in six years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to attend the upcoming G7 summit to be held in Canada’s Alberta province, people familiar with the matter have said.
It is learnt that Ottawa is yet to send an invitation to the Indian prime minister for the summit but Modi, in any way, would have skipped it as such a visit would have required a lot of groundwork considering the current state of ties between the two sides, said the people cited above.
Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh said the G7 Summit of the presidents of the USA and France; the prime ministers of the UK, Japan, Italy and Canada; and the Chancellor of Germany is taking place in Kananaskis in Alberta, Canada, from June 15.
The presidents of Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Ukraine and the prime minister of Australia have also been invited to the summit, he noted.
“Before 2014, G7 was actually G8 for many years and had included Russia. Dr Manmohan Singh would be invited for G8 Summits where his voice would be heard. It was at one such summit in Germany in June 2007 where the famous Singh-Merkel formula for climate change negotiations had been unveiled,” Ramesh said in a post on X.
He said the tradition of inviting Indian prime ministers continued after 2014.
“But now, for the first time in 6 years, ‘Vishwaguru’ will not be in attendance at the Canada summit. Whatever spin may be given, the fact remains that this is yet another big diplomatic bungle – after the blunder of allowing the US to overturn decades of Indian foreign policy by mediating between India and Pakistan and allowing American authorities to call for continued talks at a ‘neutral site’,” the Congress leader said in his post.
The India-Canada relations had hit rock bottom following then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations in 2023 of a potential Indian link to the killing of pro-Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
