EVIAN (France), June 3: Leaders of the world’s top industrial nations ended a summit on Tuesday by pledging joint moves to help rebuild Iraq and expressing confidence that economic recovery was around the corner.
“We need to get together to rebuild Iraq,” said French President Jacques Chirac who hosted the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Evian.
The French president, who used the meeting to spotlight his vision of a multipolar world by inviting a dozen developing country leaders to the first day, insisted that he had not changed his opposition to the Iraq war.
The US, which had taken a unilateral decision to strike Iraq, now needed Europeans to reconstruct the country, he said. “You can make war alone but you cannot make peace alone,” said Chirac.
A four-page closing statement said the G8 leaders’s “shared objective is a fully sovereign, stable and democratic Iraq.”
Mr Chirac rejected speculation that the rising value of the euro against the dollar could cause Europe to slide into deflation but admitted: “Each of us considers stability of exchange rates as very important for growth.”
Global trade also topped the summit agenda with leaders vowing to secure a deal on liberalization by the end of 2004 as well as an accord on low-cost medicines for poor nations before a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Cancun, Mexico this September.
Leaders put North Korea and Iran on notice over their nuclear programmes and said all countries must help fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But in a warning to Washington, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Mr Chirac said the G8 had agreed Iran would not be attacked over weapons of mass destruction despite tough language from US officials.
“Iran will not be a second Iraq — all agreed on that,” said Schroeder while Chirac said diplomacy was the way to impose stricter international controls on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Controversy was fuelled, however, by a reference in the G8 statement to the possible use of “other measures” to tackle threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, but Chirac insisted that he remained opposed to any military action not backed by the UN Security Council.
Until Bush left on Monday for the Middle East, the Evian summit had focused on healing the transatlantic row over Iraq which pitted the US against the G8 members France and Germany, which strongly opposed the conflict.
There were some signs of reconciliation as Chirac promised Bush he would send French special operations forces to Afghanistan to help track down Al Qaeda terrorists. But Chirac insisted that he had not changed his mind about the American invasion of Iraq. “It is wise to have international rules and keep to them,” he told reporters.
Agencies add: Russia said on Tuesday it will not stop its nuclear cooperation with Iran, but insisted Tehran’s nuclear activities must come under international control.
“Iran is our neighbour, we cooperate with it and we will continue to to cooperate,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a Group of Eight (G8) summit here.
“In parallel we will insist that all Iran’s nuclear programmes remain under the control of the IAEA,” the UN’s nuclear watchdog, he told reporters.
