BEIJING/PARIS, April 25: France on Friday issued an unprecedented invitation to China to a prestigious world economic summit, at the same time praising Beijing’s role in trying to avert war in Iraq.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing he would be welcome to join leaders of the world’s traditional economic powers and Russia at a Group of Eight (G-8) summit in France in early June.
“The (French) president (Jacques Chirac) sincerely desires your presence at this major international rendezvous,” he said in the presence of journalists.
“He told me to send you his best regards for the quality of the contacts you regularly had with each other during the Iraq crisis,” Raffarin said.
China, where the Communist Party holds sway, has never taken part in a forum of the G-8, a body created by and for the large, established free-market democracies.
The invitation to the meeting in the Alpine spa town of Evian, near the border with Switzerland, is a deeply symbolic move in economic and diplomatic terms. French officials said Mr Hu was happy to receive the invitation and hoped to make it to the summit.
Russia was only recently admitted to the G8 club, which otherwise comprises the Group of Seven powers — the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, Italy and Canada.
Diplomats have until recently said Russia was included for political rather than economic reasons to the important forum created in the 1970s.
China’s economic growth has been far stronger recently than in the traditional economic powerhouses of the world.
At a news conference in Beijing, Mr Raffarin said: “France and its partners have decided that the Evian meeting would be one discussing development. Therefore we have expressed a wish that China be present given the theme of our discussions.”
He also said China and France shared similar views on the need for the United Nations — bypassed in the invasion of Iraq _ to play a central role in the reconstruction of that country.—Reuters
