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Food security, climate to keep G-8 leaders' hands full at summit+
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TOKYO, July 5_(Kyodo) _ Amid immense security and anticipated protest rallies, leaders from the Group of Eight major nations are set to descend on Japan's Hokkaido from Sunday for their annual summit and to draw up initiatives to tackle climate change, world economic concerns, African development and global political issues.
Japan, as host of the three-day summit from Monday, is most eager to achieve progress on a consensus on a post-2012 emissions cut framework. Meanwhile, global attention will also be on the leaders' resolve to curb surges in oil and food prices, a pressing issue that rose to top the agenda in recent months.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will be joined by fellow G-8 leaders, as well as heads of 14 other nations invited to take part in two outreach dialogue sessions. In terms of the number of participating world leaders, it will be the largest summit since it began in 1975 and Fukuda's schedule is packed with bilateral talks on the sidelines.
"The keyword for this summit is globalization and its impact on the world economy and on everyone's lives, such as the rise in food and oil prices," a senior Foreign Ministry official involved in the summit preparations said, adding that a collective G-8 action for a comprehensive solution is necessary in the face of a variety of interlinked issues.
The G-8 will kick off the summit at the Lake Toya resort with an outreach dialogue with the leaders of South Africa, Algeria, Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the African Union Commission, the United Nations and the World Bank on Monday to discuss African development and food security.
They will also review the progress on G-8 aid pledges at the 2005 Gleneagles summit, and the major nations are expected to reaffirm their commitments, most notably the doubling of aid for Africa by 2010.
On Tuesday, the G-8 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States will convene exclusively for a full day of talks focused on economic, political and environmental issues.
They aim to send a collective message calling on producers and consumers worldwide to make utmost efforts to stabilize markets amid skyrocketing oil and food prices.
The major nations' club, which began in 1975 with six members in the midst of a world recession set off by the first oil crisis, will affirm their collaboration to monitor trade flows in crude oil futures markets to minimize the downside risks to global growth.
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, in announcing an additional $50 million worth of food aid by Japan on Friday, said the leaders will also discuss a framework to secure food reserves to provide swift assistance in the future.
"There remain the issues such as whether to actually keep stockpiles in warehouses or to keep account on the books, and of course, we will also discuss how to ensure swift delivery in emergencies," Komura said.
The weak dollar, the need for food-exporting nations to lift trade restrictions, and the promotion of new biofuels from nonfood materials will also be on the agenda, a Japanese official said.
As this year's G-8 chair, Japan is desperate to make progress on the issue of climate change, compared with last year's meeting in Germany when the group only vaguely agreed to "consider seriously" a target of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
"There is consensus that we must make progress this year from where we were at Heiligendamm," another senior ministry official involved in the preparatory negotiations said. "But whether that will be one step, two, three or four steps forward, we don't know and I think negotiations will continue up to the very last minute."
Japanese government sources said the G-8 leaders are unlikely to formalize the 2050 target, although the United States has agreed in principle for it to be specified in a chairman's summary on the condition that the participation of emerging economies, such as China and India, is also called for.
Japanese officials acknowledged that the timing of the summit has made it difficult to expect concrete achievements on the climate change issue, given the ongoing two-track negotiation process of the Major Economies Meeting and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which December 2009 has already been set as the goal to agree on a post-2012 emissions cut framework.
"Half of the MEM countries are in the G-8, and this means that the G-8 has the opportunity to assume an independent role in the process," Masaharu Kono, deputy foreign minister and Fukuda's personal representative at the pre-summit negotiations, said last month.
Noting that it would be "unproductive" to talk about mid- and long-term goals without the participation of major emitters such as China and India, Kono stressed that the G-8 leaders will focus on discussing to what extent they should exert leadership in the MEM process.
To underscore the importance of the climate change issue, MEM leaders will meet Wednesday, in between outreach sessions with the G-8 and major emerging economies Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
The MEM session will comprise of the G-8, the five emerging nations, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea.
Ahead of the talks, the five emerging powers are expected to hold a separate meeting in Sapporo on Tuesday, where they plan to issue a statement, hoping that their views will be reflected in the G-8 post-summit documents.
With this year marking the midpoint of the 2000-2015 U.N. Millennium Development Goals, the G-8 leaders are expected to welcome a "Toyako Framework of Action" focused especially on tackling health-related issues, a field seen to be lagging behind the most among the eight-point set of goals.
They will also encourage African nations to improve their investment climate and continue efforts toward economic and political reforms to sustain the positive growth trend in recent years.
As the first major gathering of world leaders since the recent breakthrough in North Korea's denuclearization process, the summit will also stress the need to strengthen the nonproliferation regime and deliver a strong message urging North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear activities.
On other regional issues, the leaders are expected to express concern over the political chaos in Zimbabwe, agree to press forward with the Middle East peace process, and underscore the importance of providing counterterrorism support to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In addition to a summit declaration, a chairman's summary and a statement from the MEM on climate change, various stand-alone statements are also expected to be issued over the course of the summit, such as on food security, antiterrorism measures and global health issues.
Fukuda will hold bilateral talks with his counterparts on the sidelines of the summit, beginning with U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday. The two will mainly discuss North Korea, including Japan's concerns over the U.S. delisting of Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism, and climate change.
The 71-year-old prime minister will also meet one-on-one with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday and Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, among others.
Fukuda, Medvedev and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be attending the summit for the first time. French President Nicolas Sarkozy debuted last year, while Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be making their third appearance.
President Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, which will succeed as the G-8 chair next year, will be participating for the seventh time. Meanwhile, this year will be Bush's eighth and last attendance at the summit before stepping down next January.
The European Commission is represented at the summit by President Jose Barroso.
In preparation for the summit, Japan has put not only Hokkaido but also major cities including Tokyo on high alert, mobilizing about 20,000 police officers around the summit venue and just as many in the nation's capital to brace for possible violent rallies and other emergency incidents.
The Air Self-Defense Force has flown reconnaissance aircraft in and near Hokkaido to prevent terrorist attacks from the air, as the summit venue is located on top of a hill.
Activists planning to protest against the summit have set up camp sites in Hokkaido that can accommodate about 2,000 to 3,000 people.
Copyright ? 2008 Kyodo News International, Inc.
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