While saying “I understand the strength of feeling,” the prime minister continued to insist he wanted to be “looking forward, not back.” He added that he wanted to “move forward together on climate resilience, on education, on trade and on growth to better enable us to address the inequalities of today.”
Several nations raised the subject of reparatory justice in the Friday sessions, at which Starmer was present, a person with knowledge of the talks told POLITICO.
Starmer’s press conference ran more than an hour late as deliberations continued over the wording of the summit communiqué.
However Starmer told journalists: “The delay was not on paragraph 22 on reparations; that was locked down hours ago.”
Earlier on Saturday, Commonwealth leaders chose Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Botchwey as the body’s new secretary-general in an opaque, behind-closed-doors retreat with no aides.
Ghana recently hosted a conference on reparations, but Botchwey told a debate hosted by the Chatham House think tank last month: “It had moved from financial reparations now to justice in terms of what do we get for climate? What do we get in terms of the development cooperation framework?”