UN chief to travel to India for BRICS summit

United Nations: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will travel to India next week for the BRICS Summit, where he will meet with leaders from rising economies around the world, according to his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

On Tuesday, he stated that the visit had been scheduled and that an official announcement would follow.

Guterres was at the just-concluded Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in the Kyrgyzstan capital Bishkek, but did not have a formal meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, IANS reported.

For Guterres, who will be ending his tenure as UN head in December, this would be his fifth visit to India, and second this year.

He had attended the India-AI Impact Summit in February.

Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran will be at the BRICS summit that starts on September 12.

That may be Guterres' last chance as Secretary-General to meet Putin and Xi, formally or informally, because they will be skipping the annual high-level meeting of the General Assembly later this month.

The ten-member BRICS is taking place at a fraught time for the world, with conflicts raging in the Gulf region and in Ukraine.

Leaders of two Gulf adversaries, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, are expected to be there.

India, as the Chair, has set the summit's theme as 'Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability', ideas that Guterres has promoted in his ten-year run as the UN's head.