Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) are arriving in Calgary, Canada one by one on Tuesday for the annual summit to be held on June 26 and 27 at a remote resort in Canada's Rocky Mountains amid unprecedented security.
The leaders from Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Italy and Russia are supposed to be taken by helicopters from the Calgary Airport to Kananaskis, some 100 kilometers away from the city of Calgary in Alberta Province.
The G8 leaders are expected to focus their discussion on strengthening global economic growth, building a new partnership for Africa's development and fighting terrorism, according to the agenda.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who is arriving this afternoon, will use the occasion to strengthen coalition support for the ongoing battle on terrorism. Bush has said that his principal goalat Kananaskis will be "making sure this coalition of freedom-loving countries is strong."
However, his G8 colleagues might be anxious to offer their thoughts on the damage that U.S. actions on steel, agriculture andsoftwood lumber are exerting on the coalition, not to mention its refusal to join the Kyoto treaty on global warming.
At the same time, they are also concerned about Bush's emergingnew doctrine of preemptive strikes against terrorists and countries that develop weapons of mass destruction.
Bush, in commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy on June 1, said the U.S. will strike preemptively against suspected terrorists and the states that support them. The remarks have aroused new concern about what many allies see as a troubling U.S.tendency toward unilateralism.
Observers said Bush's priorities in fighting terrorism, coping with the Middle East crisis and laying out Washington's plan to expand its war to Iraq may overshadow other G8 agenda items.
This year, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who is hosting the G8 summit for the second time, has made a special commitment to the development of an Africa Action Plan in order tohelp Africa address its social and economic marginalization. In Genoa last year, G8 leaders decided to develop a concrete plan to respond to a unique proposal put forward by African Leaders, whichis known as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
The G8 leaders will be joined in their discussions by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the leaders of five African countries, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, who willurge their rich-nation counterparts to support the made-in-Africa plan to revitalize their stricken continent.
NEPAD aims to halve the number of African living in poverty by 2015 and meet several other development targets. Africa's 53 nations include the lowest 28 on the United Nations Human Development Index, a ranking of 162 countries. The continent has largely failed to benefit from economic globalization and has alsobeen hit hard by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, famine and war.
Advocates for aid to Africa urged the G8 to double aid over thenext three years. In a report released Monday, ActionAid, a globalaid group, said the world is far behind meeting the United Nations' goal of cutting global poverty in half by 2015.
"Unless they radically change their approach, 2015 will come and go and 66 million children will have died needlessly because of poverty," said Matthew lockwood, the report's author.
The summit is being held against the backdrop of increasing hope for a stronger global economic recovery in 2002. The G8 leaders are likely to signal renewed confidence in the world's economic prospect and express many of the sentiments evident at a recent meeting of the Group of Seven finance ministers in Canada.
Canada government chose Kananaskis as the summit site apparently to avoid a repeat of last year's violent street clashesin Genoa, Italy, in which one protester was killed and hundreds were injured.
Security is extraordinarily tight for the summit, the first since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. in which morethan 3000 people were killed.
Anti-aircraft missile were deployed around the highway leading to the summit site and in other locations, ready to shoot down anyaircraft that violates the 150-kilometer no-fly zone around Kananaskis Village, accessible only by a two-lane road.
A brigade of Canadian infantry -- usually consisting of 4,500 soldiers -- is assisting police in patrolling the "exclusion zone"extending for 6.5 kilometers around the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis.
Thousands of anti-globalization activists gathered in the downtown financial district in Calgary on Sunday to stage their first protest against the 30-hour G8 summit, promising that more mass mobilization is to come. Many marchers complained that the Canadian government tried to shut down dissenting voices by choosing the secluded mountain resort for the summit.
(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2002)
