By Shivangi Acharya and Krishn Kaushik
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Foreign&nbsp;ministers&nbsp;from around the world&nbsp;meet&nbsp;in New Delhi this week in the shadow of Russia's&nbsp;war&nbsp;in&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;and spiralling U.S.-China&nbsp;tensions, with host India hoping that issues like climate change and Third World debt are not overlooked.
The March 1-2&nbsp;meeting of the&nbsp;G20&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministers&nbsp;will be held days after a&nbsp;meeting of finance chiefs of the bloc in Bengaluru, where they wrangled over condemning Russia for the&nbsp;war, failed to reach a consensus&nbsp;on a joint statement and settled instead for a summary document.
The outcome was similar to a&nbsp;G20&nbsp;summit&nbsp;meeting in Bali last November, when host Indonesia also issued a final declaration acknowledging differences.
Last July, Russian&nbsp;Foreign&nbsp;Minister Sergei Lavrov walked out of a&nbsp;G20&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministers&rsquo;&nbsp;meeting, also in Bali, after the West strongly denounced the&nbsp;war.
The New Delhi&nbsp;meeting will be attended by Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Britain's James Cleverly, while&nbsp;China&nbsp;is expected to send its&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;minister, Qin Gang. In all, representatives of 40 countries, including non-G20&nbsp;members invited by India, and multilateral organisations will attend.
The&nbsp;G20&nbsp;bloc includes the wealthy G7 democracies, as well as Russia,&nbsp;China, India, Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia among other countries.
A&nbsp;meeting of&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministers&nbsp;of the Quad countries &ndash; the United States, India, Australia and Japan &ndash; is also scheduled to be held on the sidelines.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government wants to steer the focus&nbsp;of this week&rsquo;s&nbsp;meeting to issues like climate change and the debt of developing nations, said an Indian&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
India does not want&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;to&nbsp;dominate&nbsp;the event, but it will be top of the agenda, said the official. It is New Delhi's "intention to continue playing the voice of the Global South and raising issues pertinent to the region," the official added.
Blinken will highlight U.S. efforts to address food and energy security issues affecting developing nations, said Ramin Toloui, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.
The U.S. top diplomat also will "underscore the damage that Russia's&nbsp;war&nbsp;of aggression has caused" and encourage other nations to redouble calls for Russia to end the&nbsp;war, Toloui told reporters ahead of Blinken's travel to the&nbsp;meeting.
The&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministers'&nbsp;meeting will also be watched for how&nbsp;tensions&nbsp;between Washington and Beijing play out, including over the&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;war.
China, along with Russia, declined to sign the summary statement of the finance chiefs in Bengaluru.
Earlier on Monday,&nbsp;China&nbsp;accused the United States of "endangering" peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait after a U.S. P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance military plane flew through the sensitive waterway.
BALLOON&nbsp;TENSIONS
Ties between the world's two largest economies have been strained this month after the U.S. military shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States.&nbsp;China&nbsp;says the balloon was a civilian research vessel that was accidentally blown off course, calling the U.S. response an over-reaction.
The row prompted Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing.
China's top diplomat Wang Yi called the U.S. handling of the balloon incident "unimaginable" and "hysterical".
New Delhi has sought to walk a delicate neutral line on the Russia-Ukraine&nbsp;war.
While Modi has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that it was not a time for&nbsp;war, India has refused to blame Moscow for the conflict, seeking a diplomatic solution and sharply boosting its purchases of Russian oil.
Differences over the conflict will be played out again at this week's&nbsp;meeting, said Anil Wadhwa, a former Indian diplomat and distinguished fellow at New Delhi&rsquo;s Vivekananda International Foundation.
"It is unlikely that&nbsp;G20&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministers&nbsp;can agree on common language suggesting ways and mechanisms to deal with the situation in&nbsp;Ukraine," he said.
"The reasons are many but the most important issue is that the situation in&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;has become extremely fluid."
(Reporting by Shivangi Acharya and Sarita Chaganti Singh in Bengaluru and Krishn Kaushik and Rupam Jain in Delhi and Simon Lewis in Astana, Kazakhstan; Writing by Y.P. Rajesh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Bill Berkrot)

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Ukraine war, US-China tensions to dominate G20 foreign ministers meet