Response to Arab unrest tops wide agenda at G8 summit
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From the turmoil in the Arab world to the impact of Japan's nuclear crisis and the future of the Internet, the leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) will grapple with a raft of tough issues when they meet under the chairmanship of French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week.
Sarkozy is hoping to boost his flagging support at home ahead of next year's French presidential elections with a successful presidency of the G8 and the G20 groups of leading world economics.
However, his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama is likely to steal much of the limelight at the G8 summit on Thursday and Friday in the elegant northern French seaside resort of Deauville.
The summit will be Obama's first major world meeting since the killing of Osama bin Laden and he is heading to France days after a landmark speech in Washington calling for a new direction in American policy toward the Arab world.
Obama will seek support in Deauville for that policy of backing for the regimes that are emerging from protests that toppled long-standing leaders in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year as well as for protesters in other Arab nations.
"We support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region," Obama said in his speech at the State Department. "It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy."
U.S. officials said getting broad G8 support for that policy would be perhaps the most important outcome of the Deauville summit.
"We expect there to be a broad embrace of an approach to the Middle East and North Africa that includes many of the elements that the President laid out in his speech," Mike Froman, deputy U.S. national security advisor for international economic affairs has told reporters in Washington.
He said that could include supporting financial stabilization, modernization and reform of economies in the region and further integration both regionally and with the global economy.
Sarkozy and other European leaders are also keen to show their support to new leaders in the Arab world. The French president has invited new interim leaders of Tunisia and Egypt to join the second day of the G8 meeting on Friday and a package of economic support measures is expected.
On Tuesday, the European Commission, the European Union (EU)'s executive body, announced it was increasing funding for the Union's eastern and southern neighbors by 1.24 billion euros (about 1.75 billion U.S. dollars) to 7 billion euros (about 9.87 billion dollars) over the next two years. Part of the money will go to supporting "democratic change" and civil society, said Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
Another option is a revival of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which was founded in 1991 to support the economies of former Soviet bloc countries. The London-based bank is funded by the United States, Japan and European nations and French and U.S. officials have talked about changing the bank's direction to focus on North Africa and the Middle East.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are expected to report to the G8 on proposals to stabilize and modernize the Tunisian and Egyptian economies. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also scheduled to attend those talks on Friday.
Obama's attendance at the G8 summit is part of a European tour that is also taking in Ireland, Britain and Poland. The White House is using the visit to stress the strength of America's trans-Atlantic relationship at a time when some in Europe have been concerned that the administration has neglected those ties to focus on emerging powers in Asia and Latin America.
With Britain and France leading the NATO operation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya and the EU's economic weight crucial to the development of North Africa and the Middle East, Obama is at pain to underscore the importance of U.S. relations with Europe.
Obama's Middle East speech received a warm welcome from EU foreign ministers on Monday. "The fundamental changes across the Arab world have made the need for progress on the Middle East peace process all the more urgent," the ministers said in a statement after their meeting in Brussels. "Recent events have indeed shown the necessity of heeding the legitimate aspirations of peoples in the region."
Russia, however, may be less warm to the West's vision for the region. Moscow has been concerned about Western pressure on some countries such as Syria.
Going into the G8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been expressing strong concerns about Obama's plan to develop a NATO missile defense shield in Europe.
Russian officials have talked about the risk of a return to Cold War tensions, a possible withdrawal from international disarmament agreements and a new arms race unless Moscow gets cast-iron guarantees that the planned missile defenses won't target Russia.
The missile issue is expected to dominate a bilateral meeting between Medvedev and Obama on the sidelines of the G8 on Thursday.
The opening sessions of the summit on Thursday will focus on economic issues and nuclear safety.
Leaders will discuss a revision of international nuclear safety standards in the wake of the radiation leaks triggered by the earthquake and tsunami damage to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is expected to tell the summit that his country will tighten it's own nuclear safety standards and take steps to reduce its dependence on nuclear power by encouraging the development of renewable energy, including by rules to make solar panels obligatory on all new buildings from 2030.
Sarkozy also wants to have wider talks on the green economy and the Internet as a motors for reviving world economic growth.
Ahead of the G8 summit, Sarkozy invited leading figures from the world of information technology, including Google's Eric Schmidt and Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, to Paris for a so-called eG8 summit focused on the future of the Internet.
The Deauville summit will take up the issue on Thursday, in recognition of the economic importance of a sector that accounts for 6 percent of world output and political issues about Internet freedom, privacy, copyright and cybercrime.
Other economic issues such as reviving the Doha Round of world trade talks, the eurozone's debt problems and aid for Africa will also be on the agenda.
Nine African leaders are scheduled to join the talks on Friday. The G8 has faced criticism from aid organizations for seeking to cover up the failure to reach targets for development aid to the world's poorest countries.
Although not on the official agenda, the leaders also seem sure to discuss the leadership of the IMF following Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest on sexual assault charges in New York.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has emerged as the leading candidate from Europe, but many from developing economies are pushing for an end to the arrangement whereby the top IMF job always goes to a European.
Security in Deauville will be tight with over 12,000 French military and police watching over the summit.
