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Journalism of Courage
Amid recent controversy over Germany’s Foreign minister allegedly not getting a proper welcome when she landed in India, the German Ambassador, Philipp Ackermann, said on Monday (March 6) that the “Indian protocol has done outstanding work this week” and was not at fault.
The minister, Annalena Baerbock, was in India to attend the G-20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting that began on March 1. A video had been doing the rounds on social media of Baerbock descending from her plane alone in New Delhi, with no red carpet and no officials welcoming her. This had led to allegations of India treating the German minister differently from other dignitaries.
What is the protocol to welcome visiting foreign dignitaries, and what happened in Baerbock’s case?
Protocol to receive visiting Foreign Ministers includes a red carpet and a line of officials, which welcomes the arriving delegation. This happens when the visiting minister is arriving on their own aircraft, and not a commercial plane. Normally, the arrival is coordinated between the embassy of the country concerned and the protocol division of the Ministry of External Affairs. But plane timings sometimes have a error margin of half an hour, which is taken into account by the protocol officials.
The German ambassador clarified that the incident took place because Baerbock’s plane landed early. While the minister was asked to wait in the aeroplane for some time, she eventually decided to leave.
Speaking to ANI, Ackermann said, “We had to transfer her to the conference centre and she was a little early so the German authorities asked her to wait on the plane for a while. She had some breakfast and then spontaneously decided to leave the plane without the receiving line being formed. It has nothing to do with Indian protocol. I can only say again and again the Indian protocol has done outstanding work this week.”
The ambassador also said the minister is not a “ very pretentious person” and did not mind the absence of a receiving line.
“The minister came out of the plane. You’ve seen it on the little video on social media, she laughed, she had a great time, she thought to herself it was quite funny and we had a very nice welcome. And she’s not a very pretentious person, so she had no problem with this little mishap,” Ackermann was quoted as saying.
Several Foreign ministers were landing on the same day for the G-20 meet, and hence there was always the possibility of a delayed or early arrival, which could create situations where the receiving delegation was not ready to welcome the visiting delegation.
Among the ministers who came to India for the G-20 meet were US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, France’s Catherine Colonna, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajan, Australia’s Penny Wong, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Indonesia’s Retno Marsudi, Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, and Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
The G-20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting was unable to agree to a joint communique on March 2 because of differences on the Russia-Ukraine war between the US-led West on one side and Russia-China on the other.
This came after the G-20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Bangalore too could not come up with a communique.
After the meeting, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said: “There were differences on the Ukraine conflict which we could not reconcile.” However, he sought to clarify that there was consensus on “95 per cent” of the issues, except for two paragraphs. “Everyone was not on the same page on those two paragraphs,” he said.
