Fri, Jun 28, 2002 page1

• Africa the focus of G8's final meeting

  DISCORD A less-than-united front was evident in the Canadian Rockies, as world leaders differed on giving aid to Africa and on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat

  • AGENCIES
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  Leaders of G8 industrial nations were wrapping up a two-day summit yesterday seeking to overcome African aid discord but set to approve US$20 billion to keep Russian nuclear arms from falling into the hands of terrorists.

  While the official agenda turned to Africa, private talks still focused on the Middle East.

  The leaders, meeting under heavy security at the Canadian Rockies resort of Kananaskis, were also due to continue talks on a response to terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.

  US President George W. Bush's Middle East proposals dominated the G8 meeting on Wednesday, as Bush threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinians unless they removed longtime leader Yasser Arafat. Other leaders at the summit resisted Bush's call for Arafat's removal. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the closest US ally, said it was up to the Palestinians to choose their own leader.

  Also on Wednesday, the G8 leaders embraced Russia as a full member and said Russia would host the 2006 summit, reflecting a "remarkable economic and democratic transformation."

  UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the leaders of Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa were to join the G8 leaders for a session yesterday, after which the G8 was to announce an Action Plan for Africa.

  Diplomats said both the US and Britain opposed specific aid targets in a blueprint for African revival. However, French President Jacques Chirac and European Commission President Romano Prodi insisted the so-called New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) -- set to be launched by the G8 -- must contain a specific aid pledge.

  France is demanding up to half of fresh development aid worth US$12 billion by 2006 agreed at a UN conference in Monterrey, Mexico, in March must be set aside for Africa. NEPAD pledges corruption-free governments in return for aid.

  Officials said initiatives include US$1 billion in extra aid to cut the debt of poor countries, and possibly a promise to earmark for Africa a portion of new aid pledged at a UN meeting last March.

  In other developments, the G8 leaders clinched a US$20 billion deal on Wednesday designed to keep Russia's vulnerable excess plutonium deposits out of the hands of terrorists.

  Under the plan, the US will put up US$10 billion over 10 years, amid anxiety that terror groups could sow carnage by detonating nuclear, or radiological "dirty bombs."

  Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany and Japan are required to come up with another US$10 billion under the plan, which has become known as "10 plus 10 over 10."

  Should those nations fail to find the cash, a call for donations will be made to other states, the German delegation sources said.

  However, a senior Kremlin foreign policy official said that while a final deal on plutonium project was near, some finer details still had to be ironed out.

  "We are still talking," said the Kremlin's top foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko after the meeting. "We have not reached an agreement, but we think that there will be positive results."

  Some European states had earlier expressed reservations about Russia's apparent refusal to offer Western experts access to military sites where the plutonium is stored.

  Dismantling Russia's stocks of military plutonium, which are viewed as particularly susceptible to theft in the corruption-tainted post-Soviet era, has become a main focus of international efforts to halt proliferation.

  The doomsday scenario of terrorists brandishing nuclear or radiological weapons took on added urgency after the US said it had thwarted a bid by the al-Qaeda network to explode a "dirty bomb."

  Experts warn that a "dirty bomb," while it may not kill a huge number of people, could contaminate a wide area with radiation and sow panic among the population.
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