BRICS foreign ministers on Thursday asserted their bloc's ambition to rival Western powers but their talks in South Africa were overshadowed by questions over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would be arrested if he attended a summit in August.
South Africa's foreign minister Naledi Pandor said her country was mulling options if Putin, the subject of a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), came to the planned BRICS summit in Johannesburg.
As a member of the ICC, South Africa would theoretically be required to arrest Putin, and Pandor was bombarded with questions about that as she arrived for a first round of talks with representatives from Brazil, Russia, India and China.