Compromise appeared within reach yesterday among the world's most industrialized nations on relieving Africa's crushing poverty and combating global warming.
US President George W. Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) nations were to begin arriving at this posh golf resort. Their three days of annual discussions were beginning over dinner at the Gleneagles hotel.
Protesters who have vowed to disrupt the summit were already in place. More than 100 activists, many covering their faces with bandanas and wearing hoods, smashed car windows, threw rocks at police and attempted to blockade one of the main approach roads to the exclusive summit resort.
PHOTO: AP
Police with armor, helmets and shields formed a chain across the closed main highway to Gleneagles from Edinburgh.
After that initial violence, police citing public safety concerns canceled what had been billed as a peaceful march by anti-poverty campaigners planned later yesterday near the summit site.
This year's G8 talks marked the third summit held at remote, sealed-off locales following the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, when hundreds of thousands of protesters clashed violently with police.
As preparations continued in Gleneagles, aides met behind closed doors on the two issues UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has made the main focus of this year's summit.
Bush cleared the way for one compromise when he pledged last week to double US support for Africa to more than US$8.6 billion by 2010, up from the US$4.3 billion the US provided last year. That amount wouldn't nearly meet Blair's target for summit nations to increase Africa aid to 0.7 percent of their gross national product, but still would be far higher than any previous US administration's commitment.
Bush, stopping in Denmark on the way to Scotland, said he would emphasize the need for African nations to commit to good governance.
Compromise has proven even tougher on Blair's other key issue, developing a plan to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, with US officials lobbying behind the scenes against setting any specific goals or timetables for emission reductions as called for in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Sir Michael Jay, Blair's representative in the discussions, called the negotiations "pretty intense." He predicted the G8 would reach an accord that recognized the problem and the need to combat it.
The US is the only G8 country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The US has been at odds with most of the other nations regarding global warming, saying further study is needed about scientific findings on climate change.
Bush said in Denmark that "the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."
However, he made plain that mandatory targets are off the table. He referred repeatedly to the Kyoto treaty in the past tense, even though it took effect in February, and said the goal for his plan is to control greenhouse gases merely "as best as possible."
Bush said he "can't wait" to talk with summit colleagues about the US' alternative proposed approach, which stresses spreading clean-energy technologies to both developed and developing nations.
Blair was expected to try to salvage the climate-change issue by shifting debate away from disagreements with the US and toward gaining support for emission controls in China. The country's surging economy has made it the world's second-biggest producer of greenhouse gases after the US.
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