The Group of Eight leaders were due to start their first day of joint talks yesterday with tough issues like climate change and possible independence for Serbia's Kosovo province in front of them.
The host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is pushing for an agreement on climate change, and favors mandatory cuts on emissions -- while US President George W. Bush held his ground against them.
Bush did express willingness on Wednesday to work with Merkel on climate change at the Group of Eight summit, assuring Merkel of "a strong desire" for a climate change plan to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. He detailed two major objectives: "One is to reduce greenhouse gases. Another is to become more energy independent."
PHOTO: AFP
Merkel called their pre-summit meeting "a very good conversation and very good debate" -- but acknowledged afterward that "there are a few areas we will continue to work on."
Merkel is pushing for specific targets on reducing the carbon emissions believed to cause global warming, including a "two-degree" target under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase by no more than 2oC.
The US has now acknowledged that global warming is a serious problem, and Europe and others have come around to Washington's view that no solution is viable without the participation of developing energy guzzlers such as China, India and Brazil.
But Bush has proposed that the US and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases meet and, by next year, set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions.
He believes each country should set its own goals on improving energy security, reducing air pollution and cutting greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 20 years.
"The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution," Bush said.
The first working sessions, focusing on finance, foreign policy issues such as Kosovo, Darfur and the Middle East, and later on climate change, trade talks and Africa, were due to begin in earnest yesterday.
The leaders arrival came along with protests by thousands of demonstrators who streamed across fields and through forests, some throwing themselves down on roads and railways tracks in a bid to disrupt the summit.
An estimated 10,000 protesters ignored orders to stay at least 6km from the barbed-wire fence protecting the summit site, police said. Officers fired water cannon to force back some protesters, many dressed in clown costumes and in colorful wigs.
More than 130 people were arrested and at least eight officers were slightly injured, police said.
The meeting comes amid increasingly frosty relations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US and Europe.
The days leading up to the summit were dominated by jarring rhetoric from Putin over US plans to base a new missile defense system in nearby Poland and the Czech Republic.
Yesterday, the group were to discuss plans backed by Europe and the US for independence for Serbia's Kosovo province, an idea that Serbian ally Russia opposes.
Merkel met with Putin on Wednesday, Bush was to meet with him yesterday, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also said he expected to have a "frank conversation" with Putin.
"We want good relations with Russia, but that can only be done on the basis that there are certain shared principles and shared values," he said in London before departing for Germany.
A Kremlin spokesman said Putin and Merkel's talks were "very good" -- and not tense.
"It's not the reality today, and we hope it won't be the reality tomorrow," Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.
"This summit isn't about disagreements between Russia and the rest of the G8 members," he said, adding that he hoped for "an open and sincere exchange of views" between Bush and Putin.
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