US and Chinese foreign ministers to meet at G20 summit

MADRID, 5 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, and the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, will hold a bilateral meeting this week on the margins of the G20 ministerial meeting that will take place in Bali (Indonesia), as announced by the North American government.

Blinken's office has included the appointment with Wang in the list of official meetings that the Secretary of State will have during this forum, where he is scheduled to discuss, among other issues, the military offensive launched by Russia on Ukraine and its derivatives in terms of food and energy security.

The head of US diplomacy plans to transfer to his counterpart the doubts raised by the ties between Moscow and Beijing, which has avoided condemning the invasion outright and has stayed out of any type of agreement on sanctions, according to sources from the Department of State quoted by 'The Washington Post'.

Washington, however, is not currently considering a bilateral meeting between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will also attend the Bali forum. The two ministers have not seen each other face to face since the start of the Russian offensive on Ukraine on February 24.

In general terms, Blinken aspires, together with Wang, to calm down the spirits between the two powers, after both have exchanged successive warnings, some of them of a military nature in the face of Beijing's sovereign claims over Taiwan.