EU Council President Charles Michel criticized China's decision to boycott a Ukraine peace conference being held in Switzerland in the coming days.
"It is disappointing that China will not be attending," Michel said on Thursday on the sidelines of the meeting at the meeting of leaders from the seven advanced industrialized democracies in southern Italy.
China said late last month it would not take part in the Ukraine peace conference that Switzerland is organizing. Beijing pointed to a clear gap between the organization of the conference and China's requirements plus the general expectations of the international community, which made it difficult for China to take part, saod Foreign Office spokeswoman Mao Ning.
Some 40 heads of state and government, along with delegations from 90 countries and organizations are expected to attend the summit being held over the weekend in the Bürgenstock Resort on Lake Lucerne.
Russia has not been invited and has dismissed the event as Western propaganda.
The summit's aim is to prepare the ground for a subsequent peace summit with Russian participation. It will also discuss food security and nuclear safety.
Earlier on Thursday, the Swiss National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) reported attacks on state websites ahead of the summit.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks hit websites of the government and organizations linked to the summit by flooding them with requests.
"The attacks were expected and are presumed to be in connection with the summit. They resulted in minor outages which were within the specified tolerance. The operation of the affected units was not significantly affected," the NCSC said in a statement.
