With US President George W. Bush to play host yesterday to world leaders critical of his Iraq policies, White House officials are hoping that the G8 summit proves a turning point where he and his adversaries on the war permanently set aside their differences.
Bush stacked his schedule of meetings for yesterday with leaders from countries that were critical of the Iraq war: Russia, Canada and Germany. His first meeting, though, was with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, which sent hundreds of troops to southern Iraq on a humanitarian mission.
Iraq and the broader Middle East have eclipsed the official economic agenda of the annual gathering of industrial powers. But summit officials said they intended to announce agreement yesterday on fighting famine on the Horn of Africa, eradicating polio, cutting poverty and developing an HIV vaccine. A G8 declaration on promoting democracy in the Middle East is expected for today.
Bush administration officials say they sensed an opening on Iraq, thanks to a confluence of positive developments and what they see as the absence of the bitter disagreements that have characterized other recent summits.
The establishment of an interim Iraqi government last week marked the beginning of the end of the US occupation, they say, and the caretaker government's president was due to arrive at the summit yesterday evening. Images of Bush meeting with Ghazi al-Yawer today will send a powerful symbolic message about Bush's intention to give Iraq full sovereignty, aides say.
The White House believes it has all but secured a UN Security Council resolution to endorse the handover of political power to Iraqis in three weeks and to authorize a US-led multinational force to remain in Iraq.
Nevertheless, US officials ac-knowledge their previous goal of drawing in more foreign troops was all but gone. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the hope now was that the new resolution would convince those countries with troops already in Iraq to "stay the course."
The administration launched an unprecedented effort here to throw a spotlight on what it views as a good news story, arranging wall-to-wall interviews between journalists and normally invisible White House aides in the National Security Council and from other corners of the White House.
The administration is also pursuing a broader effort to spur the spread of democracy in the Middle East at large. European and Arab nations have been leery of any plan that involves the US dictating to the region what it should do.
In response to calls from European countries, a G-8 document to be released today will stress the importance in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The final document will also press Middle East governments to step up efforts at promoting democracy and human rights and encourage greater participation by non-governmental groups, said a senior US official who briefed hundreds of journalists under the condition his name not be used.
US officials said a swelling population of undereducated and underemployed young people in the Middle East has to have hope for a better future if the world is to avoid rising extremism.
"The idea that we were somehow buying stability by turning a blind eye to the absence of freedom has been exposed, and exposed in the form of extremism," Rice told reporters.
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