BRICS leaders are meeting in Brazil for a two-day summit. But China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin are skipping the gathering.

The BRICS group gathered leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and China at its first summit in 2009. The bloc later added South Africa and last year included Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as full members. This is the first leaders' summit to include Indonesia.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Diplomats from the BRICS group of developing nations have agreed on a joint declaration of their leaders at a summit in Rio de Janeiro this week, three people familiar with the talks said on Saturday.