A top U.N. official~, After months of work to ensure that Russian food and fertilizer can be supplied to developing nations grappling with high prices, said on Thursday that he hopes for a breakthrough soon.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told The Associated Press that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently met with insurance giant Lloyds to help work out coverage for shipments of Russian agricultural products. This came a day after Moscow agreed to renew a wartime agreement allowing Ukraine to export crucial food supplies.
Moscow has regularly lamented the difficulty in getting insurance, funding, and logistics for its exports due to Western sanctions that do not target its food or fertilizer. Analysts and trade statistics, however, claim that Russia is transporting massive volumes of wheat via other ports. Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the U.N., declined to confirm if Guterres and Lloyds had a meeting. An email requesting comment from the insurance did not immediately receive a response.
The Black Sea region, known as the “breadbasket of the world,” provides affordable wheat, barley, vegetable oil, and other food to nations in Africa, the Middle East, and portions of Asia. The top U.N. representative on the grain deal, Griffiths, cited “a whole range of elements” as factors in Russia’s decision. These include Turkey’s role in helping to broker the deals, as well as the opinions of developing nations like China and India, which overwhelmingly support the arrangement.
A day earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is facing a challenging reelection campaign and has positioned himself as a neutral mediator, stated that Russia has extended the agreement. Griffiths stated that discussions continued on Wednesday and that he would participate in another virtual conference “to nail down the other commitments that we didn’t get in Istanbul” during last week’s grain negotiations. “Yesterday we saw great progress,” he stated on Thursday. And I’m hoping that by tomorrow or the day after that, it will be resolved.
According to Griffiths, the discussions also focus on reaching an agreement on the deal’s unfulfilled provision for the shipment of Russian ammonia, a crucial component of fertilizer, through the Black Sea. According to Griffiths, discussions will also cover the registration and inspection of ships transporting grain from Ukraine’s three open ports to areas of the world that are food insecure. Both have significantly slowed recently, and less grain has been released. He cited “a huge amount of detail work behind the scenes” by Guterres and Rebeca Grynspan, the head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, to make sure both agreements are carried out. She frequently travels to Moscow to represent the Russian side of the deals.
She and her colleagues put out daily efforts, as does the secretary-general, who, according to Griffiths, recently discussed insurance-related concerns, among others, with the head of Lloyds. He anticipates “major advances” in the support of Russian shipments in the upcoming several months, “as well as on the specific issues now facing the Black Sea, which I hope — I would like to think — will enable us to have a more sustainable existence.”
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