Foreign Secretary Kwatra said, this is one of the largest meetings of Foreign Ministers organized by any G-20 President. During the meeting, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will chair two sessions of the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
The first session will focus on issues related to multilateralism, food and energy. The second session will focus on four or five key issues, including newly emerging threats, countering terrorism and narcotics.
Discussion on the Use of Cryptocurrencies in Countering Terrorism by G20 Foreign Ministers
Regarding the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said that we hope that tomorrow’s meeting will give a clear, strong universal message on the need of G20 countries regarding the problem of terrorism and its challenges. He further said that when you talk about countering terrorism, there are several phases that need to be tackled.
Money laundering is one of them. He said that when you talk of terrorism in the early 90s, narco-financing was an issue at that time, which is now outdated. Now crypto-currencies are being used to spread terrorism across nations. Thus, crypto will become a component of counter-terrorism in the G20 deliberations.
During this, the Foreign Secretary also reminded that there was an extensive discussion on cryptocurrencies in the meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Bengaluru.
Significantly, the two-day meeting of G-20 Foreign Ministers is going to start from Wednesday evening and the main discussion will be held on Thursday. Earlier, Kwatra told a press conference that it was not right to pre-assess the outcome of the meeting. This topic is expected to be discussed in view of the current situation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he added.
He also said that the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on economic and development cooperation is an important issue for us. He said multilateralism, food and energy security, development cooperation and counter-terrorism issues would be discussed in the meeting.