Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor said the meeting with her BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) counterparts has not discussed the issue of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant for war crimes.
BRICS foreign ministers are meeting in Cape Town for two days, ahead of the main summit to be hosted in South Africa in August.
The meeting has been overshadowed by matters related to Putin, but Pandor said it was not on the agenda.
Instead, the gathering has been focused on ways to strengthen the bloc.
“I think this is something that we did not discuss as the BRICS foreign ministers, so I’m not sure that everybody has a response. I have explained previously what South Africa is doing, with respect to this.”
Pandor said she also doesn’t have a view on the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) approach to the courts to issue a declaratory order on whether, as a signatory to the Rome Statute, South Africa is obliged to act on an arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC).