G20 summit managed to yield important and useful decisions, says Russian top diplomat

The Group of Twenty summit in Buenos Aires has managed to yield serious and useful decisions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday.

"The Group of Twenty has taken rather useful decisions. We outlined our position on the digital economy, on the need to begin to adapt employment, labor and education markets to it. We laid bare our views on the situation in the area of food security. As the biggest grain producer, Russia’s in these spheres in growing," he said in an interview with the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

According to the Russian top diplomat, special attention was focused on the problem of migration and refugees. "We repelled attempt to impose on the Group of Twenty and the entire world community a concept of ‘equal responsibility’ of all states for refugees who rush to these or those countries trying to find a better life there. We stressed to our colleagues that the cause of the current unprecedented migration wave in Europe and other countries is the irresponsible policy of brutal force interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states, first of all in the Middle East and North Africa," he stressed.

"The most serious factor, obviously, was the aggression against Libya, which ruined that country turning it into a black hole for illegal weapons and drugs trafficking to southern Africa. And flows of refugees who are now a serious problem in the European Union streamed to Europe via Libya," Lavrov noted.

Apart from that, in his words, Russia tried to draw attention of other nations to the problem of terrorism and the phenomenon of foreign terrorists in particular. "They find paid work in Libya, Syria, Iraq and other countries, including in Sub-Saharan Africa and then they return to their native countries or in any third countries. It is very important to track movements of these dangerous people," he said, adding that a database of such foreign terrorists and militants was established several years ago at Russia’s initiative. Forty-two security services from 35 states, including the BRICS nations, Turkey and South Korea, as well as international counter-terrorist structures, take part in maintaining this database.

The Group of Twenty summit yielded a joint declaration on Saturday. It was not clear till the very end of the summit whether a final declaration would be ultimately passed.

The Group of Twenty nations agreed that the system of international trade and the World Trade Organization need to be improved. Possible reforms will be in focus of the next such summit in Japan in 2019.

The joint declaration reflected a gap in the positions of the United States and other member nations on climate change. The United States reiterated its plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, while the rest of the G20 nations confirmed their commitment to the development of clean energy.

The Group of Twenty also approved an anti-corruption plan of action for the next three years. Apart from that, the G20 leaders called for measures to prevent the use of the internet in terrorism purposes and stressed the importance of joint actions to address the causes why people have to flee their countries.