Western leaders have reacted nervously to a Chinese peace plan for Ukraine due to be revealed this week, but cautiously welcomed the move as a first sign that China recognizes the war cannot be regarded solely as a European affair.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅), who is widely seen as one of the few foreign politicians able to influence Russia, announced that China would launch its peace initiative on the anniversary of the war, and has already been consulting Germany, Italy and France on its proposals.
He said the peace plan would underscore the need to uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the UN Charter.
Photo: AFP
However, he also said that the legitimate security interests of Russia needed to be respected.
Diplomats who have been briefed by China are unclear how specific Beijing intends to be or whether the plan would lapse into vacuities about peaceful solutions that are often a feature of Chinese diplomacy.
A Chinese move to portray the west as warmongers could find echoes in the Global South.
Photo: AP
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s move, saying: “As a permanent member of the UN security council, China has an obligation to use its influence to secure world peace.”
Baerbock said she on Friday spoke intensively with Wang about “what a just peace means — not that you reward the aggressor, but that you stand up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
The same message has been delivered to China by French and Italian diplomats.
Baerbock said a just peace presupposes “that the one who violated territorial integrity, namely Russia, withdraws its troops from the occupied country. World peace is based on the fact that we all recognize the territorial integrity and sovereignty of each country.”
At the same time, it is also clear that “every chance” for peace must be used, she said.
Without a complete withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, there is no chance of an end to the war, Baerbock said.
“Even if it’s difficult,” all demands to end the war by ceding territory to Russia are unacceptable, she said.
“That would mean that we make the people prey to Russia. We will not do that,” she added.
China knows there is a ready audience across the Global South if it makes a call for dialogue and peace.
Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mauro Vieira said his country had condemned Russia’s aggression including at the UN, but added: “We have to try to make a solution possible. We cannot limit ourselves to talking about the war. I am not referring to immediate negotiations — we would have to go step by step, perhaps first create an environment that makes a negotiation possible.”
Namibian Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa said: “We want to solve the problem, we don’t want to find the culprit. It is of no use that Russia is spending money on weapons and the West is financing Ukraine to buy weapons.”
Some Western powers are considering whether to press for a fresh UN General Assembly resolution backing Ukraine, in the hope that an overwhelming vote in favor of it would highlight Russia’s lack of international support.
However, while a vote last year saw 141 nations back Ukraine, it is unclear how many fresh converts exist in the Global South.
One source said Ukraine understandably wants specific hard wording in these resolutions, but the more specific the resolution the more likely it is that nations will retreat into neutrality.
At the Munich conference, a succession of European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, said the West should have done more to convince the Global South that its strong support for Ukraine was not born of double standards.
“I am struck by how we have lost the trust of the Global South,” Macron said, adding that the world’s response to the war showed the need to rebalance the global order and make its institutions more inclusive.
Macron called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “neocolonialist and imperialist” attack that “broke all taboos” and said that bystanders were complicit in Russia’s aggression.
The concerns about the Global South did not distract European leaders from discussing how to rapidly increase the production of ammunition through greater joint procurement and financial incentives to the European arms industry.
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