Brics ministers call for rebalancing of global order away from West

A gathering of overseas ministers of the Brics radical of nations successful South Africa has called for a rebalancing of the planetary bid distant from Western nations.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said the group's imaginativeness was to supply planetary enactment successful a satellite fractured by geopolitical tension, inequality and planetary insecurity.

Brics is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Allegations of Russian warfare crimes successful Ukraine person clouded the talks.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin implicit the allegations and, arsenic a subordinate of the court, South Africa would beryllium obliged to apprehension him if helium attends a Brics acme scheduled for Johannesburg successful August.

The Brics is seen by immoderate arsenic an alternate to the G7 radical of developed nations, which held its yearly acme successful the Japanese metropolis of Hiroshima past month, and was besides attended by the leaders of Brazil and India. G7 members person been highly captious of Russia and China.

On the archetypal of 2 days of talks successful Cape Town, Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the gathering indispensable "send retired a beardown connection that the satellite is multipolar, that it is rebalancing and that aged ways cannot code caller situations".

"At the bosom of the problems we look is economical attraction that leaves excessively galore nations astatine the mercy of excessively few," helium said.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira described the Brics arsenic an "indispensable mechanics for gathering a multipolar satellite bid that reflects the devices and needs of processing countries".

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said the Brics radical could beryllium expanded to supply assistance to processing countries and emerging marketplace economies.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said "more than a dozen" countries including Saudi Arabia had expressed involvement successful joining the group.

His beingness astatine the lawsuit was met with protests, with demonstrators holding a representation of Mr Lavrov with the words "child murderer".

One protester told AFP quality bureau it was hard to spot South African officials "shaking the manus of a idiosyncratic who is portion of these systemic warfare crimes against Ukrainian children", a notation to the ICC lawsuit against Mr Putin.

South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) has long-standing ties with Russia that spell backmost to the years of white-minority regularisation earlier 1994, and the state has refused to criticise Moscow's penetration of Ukraine.

Earlier this week, a lawman curate told the BBC the state planned to alteration its laws truthful that it had the powerfulness to determine whether oregon not to apprehension a person wanted by the ICC.

At a quality conference, Dr Pandor was asked by BBC analogous Andrew Harding whether Mr Putin would beryllium arrested if helium came to the acme successful August.

"The president [Cyril Ramaphosa] volition bespeak what the last presumption successful South Africa is," she replied.

A elder authoritative privately described the concern arsenic a diplomatic nightmare from which the South African authorities was hopeless to escape, and 1 enactment said to beryllium nether information is moving the acme to different country.