ROME, July 24. /TASS/. Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani said on Monday that he hopes the grain deal will ultimately be resumed.
"We hope an accord [on the grain deal] will be reached so that the countries that are not directly involved in the [Ukrainian] conflict could find solutions to problems," he said opening the UN Food Systems Summit at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Greeting delegations from 160 world nations, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni called on Russia to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the deal so that grain exports from Ukrainian ports could continue. According to Meloni, the deal is very important given the current atmosphere where many countries have found themselves in a dire situation, with supply chains being broken after the pandemic and inflation rising due to soaring energy prices.
The Russian delegation to the summit is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin, who took part in the talks on the grain deal extension.
A package of documents geared to resolve the problem of food and fertilizer supplies on global markets was signed on July 22, 2022 in Istanbul and extended several times after that before ultimately expiring on July 17. Russia refused to extend it again because the part of the deal envisaging the removal of obstacles for Russian agricultural exports was never implemented. Apart from that, Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the bulk of grain that was meant to be supplied to the poorest counties was shipped to Western countries. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is ready to resurrect the deal but only after its part related to obligations to Moscow is fulfilled.