EVIAN (France), June 1: Leaders from a dozen developing countries, including China and India, met their counterparts from rich Group of Eight nations in the French spa resort of Evian on Sunday as thousands of protesters took to the streets in neighbouring towns to vent their anger at the elite club’s summit.
Violent incidents in Switzerland and France marred mainly peaceful mass demonstrations which drew an estimated 50,000 anti-globaliszation activists. Several thousand anarchists blocked roads and bridges, threw rocks and broke windows on both sides of the Franco-Swiss border as police resorted to tear gas to disperse crowds. Swiss police also used water cannons.
However, G8 leaders in Evian were sealed off from all protests by a massive security operation imposed by 25,000 police and army troops on both sides of the border.
Breaking with past tradition of the exclusive members-only club, French President Jacques Chirac, also host of this year G8, has invited the leaders of 12 developing countries to the meeting.
French diplomats said Chirac was determined to enlarge G8 discussions to cover “common challenges” facing nations in the north and the south. “In an interdependent world, our dialogue has to be further developed,” said Chirac’s spokeswoman Catherine Colonna.
The French leader’s initiative is also designed to highlight his vision of a multipolar world, as opposed to what many in Europe see as American unilateralism.
Allowed to share the G8 limelight were leaders from Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, Senegal, Mexico, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and India.
Also attending were the heads of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation.
But the developing world guests got less than five hours of the G8 leaders’ time. Also while Chirac’s north-south get-together may be good for third world morale, analysts said the group had still not met past promises of giving poor countries more aid or trade benefits.
Only 35 per cent of pledges to the poor made at last year’s G8 summit in Kananskis, Canada, have been honoured, said the University of Toronto’s G8 research group.
Others warned that Chirac’s “enlarged” G8 was risked creating “a parallel global structure” to the United Nations.
This year’s summit is also about healing post-Iraq war’s political wounds, especially between US President George W. Bush and Chirac who led European opposition to the Iraq war.
Bush and Chirac played it up for TV cameras with a firm handshake as the American leader arrived at Evian’s elegant Hotel Royal.
Nevertheless, tensions between Washington and Paris remain. In what some observers see as a deliberate snub to Chirac, Bush is spending only 24 hours at the summit which runs for three days.
CHIRAC-BUSH: Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac smiled for the cameras but set out divergent views of world order and economic development at a Group of Eight summit overshadowed by their clash over Iraq, adds AFP
Bush got a short handshake and stiff smile from his loudest critic on arrival in Evian.
Chirac hugged or embraced many other participants, including UN chief Kofi Annan and leaders of a dozen developing nations he had invited to give the “rich men’s club” an alternative view of the planet’s economic development needs.
Both Bush and Chirac have said the Iraq dispute, in which France led Germany and Russia in opposing U.S. invasion plans, was now history and both sides should look to the future.
But the French leader reasserted his vision of a “multipolar world” in which the United States was not the sole dominant power, telling a news conference: “I have no doubt that it enjoys a very broad majority across the world.”
He urged Bush to follow his example by inviting developing countries to the next G8 summit. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said talk of next year’s guest list was premature.
TAX ON ARMS TRADE: French President Jacques Chirac said here on Sunday he was in favour of a tax on the arms trade to help finance a global fund to feed the world’s hungry.
Such a tax, being pushed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, “would not be at all unjustified,” Chirac told a press conference on the first day of the Group of Eight summit.
Lula, invited to an “enlarged dialogue” on Sunday of G8 leaders with their counterparts from developing countries, said he wanted revenues from the arms trade tax to go towards a fund to feed the starving and remedy the structural causes of hunger.
Chirac said that as there was a sizable trade in small arms that “indisputably feeds everyone’s fears”, a tax on the weapons trade was an idea that should be closely considered.
ANNAN: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked Group of Eight leaders to boost their contributions to the Global Fund on AIDS and devise a long-term strategy to ensure food security in Africa.
“The time for additional funding has arrived, and I hope that you, the G8 leaders, who played such an important role in getting the fund up and running, will now endow it with the further resources it needs to achieve our shared goals,” Annan said, according to an advance copy of his speech.
EVIAN (France), June 1: Leaders from a dozen developing countries, including China and India, met their counterparts from rich Group of Eight nations in the French spa resort of Evian on Sunday as thousands of protesters took to the streets in neighbouring towns to vent their anger at the elite club’s summit.
