UK invites India for G7 FMs meet in London in May

The United Kingdom has invited India for an in-personG7foreign ministers meeting that will take place in London from May 3-5. The UK as the chair of the grouping for this year has invited India, along with Australia, South Korea, South Africa, and the Chair and Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said,"the meeting ofG7Foreign and Development Ministers next month is an opportunity to show how the world’s biggest democracies work together to ensure equitable access to vaccines, build back better from the pandemic, support girls in the poorest countries get a good quality education and agree ambitious action to tackle climate change."

A key focus of the meet will bethe COVID-19 crisisas the pandemic continues to ravage large parts of the world. Climate change will be the other big focus area, given the UK will alsohostthe UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) meet later this year.

G7is a grouping of sevenindustrialised countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, US & UK - plus the EU. This will be the first physicalG7meet to take place in over twoyears, the last being in Dinard and Saint-Malo, France in April 2019.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been invited to the 47thG7summit that will take place in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK from June 11-13. India has been regularly invited for theG7summit since 2019, first by France, then in 2020 by the US, and now by the UK this year. The physicalG7meet last year, under the formerUS President Donald Trump never happened, for reasons not known but perhaps due to thepandemic.

The formerIndian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was first invited for the G8 grouping in 2005, back then by the UK in Gleneagles. The group becameG7after"disinviting" Russia in 2014 over Crimea crisis.