G8 wrangles over climate change, aid to Africa

World leaders head into the second day of the annual G8 summit preoccupied by soaring food and oil prices and deeply divided over how to tackle climate change.

Senior officials from the Group of Eight rich nations were meeting late into the night yesterday in Japan to thrash out wording that would allow President George W. Bush today to put aside deep misgivings and sign on to a global goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.

Mr Bush is under strong pressure from Japan and Europe but says he will not back a numerical target unless big polluters, including China and India, agree to binding commitments to curb their carbon pollution.

A face-saving statement that goes beyond last year's summit pledge in Germany to "seriously consider" cuts of 50 per cent by 2050 is especially important for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who has made climate change the centrepiece of the talks.

"This is really our bottom line. I think the Prime Minister believes that at this summit somehow he will be able to convince President Bush to accept some kind of consensus formula," said Japanese Foreign Ministry official Kazuo Kodama.

Global warming ties into other big themes at the three-day meeting at a plush mountain-top hotel on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where 21,000 police have been mobilised to protect the leaders.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended yesterday's talks, said the drive to reach eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the UN General Assembly to reduce world poverty by 2015 was being directly hampered by global warming. He urged the G8 to send a strong political signal by setting a long-term goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, backed by intermediate targets that would set market forces in train to reduce energy consumption.

"We tend to think of climate change as something in the future. It is not. We see now, most of all in Africa, that drought and changing weather patterns are compounding the challenges we face in attaining the MDGs," Mr Ban said.

The G8 will set out its positions on climate change, aid to Africa, rising food prices and the global economy in a raft of statements due to be issued today.

Citing a final draft of the G8 communique, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper said the leaders would highlight downside risks to the world economy and label rising food and oil prices a "serious threat".

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi raised the spectre that oil, which hit a record high of $145.85 a barrel last week, could keep climbing and renewed Italy's call for higher margin requirements on futures markets to deter speculative buyers.

"There are fears oil prices could increase further. Some people fear they could reach $200," Mr Berlusconi told reporters.

Higher prices are taking a particularly heavy toll on the world's poor. A World Bank study issued last week said up to 105 million people could drop below the poverty line due to the leap in food prices, including 30 million in Africa.

"How we respond to this double jeopardy of soaring food and oil prices is a test of the global system's commitment to help the most vulnerable," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.

"It is a test we cannot afford to fail," he told reporters.

To help cushion the blow, officials said the G8 would unveil a series of measures to help Africa, especially its farmers, and would affirm its commitment to double aid to the world's poorest continent to $25 billion a year by 2010. The need to honour past aid pledges to Africa was a recurring refrain at yesterday's talks. But activists were sceptical about the G8's warm words. "We need to be asking ourselves why the G8 is not delivering their commitments," said Caroline Towers Kayira from ActionAid, an advocacy group.

Kumi Naidoo, of Global Call to Action Against Poverty, added: "We are not seeking charity from G8, but we are seeking justice from G8."

Leaders are also due today to finalise a statement on the political crisis in Zimbabwe after a violent election that extended President Robert Mugabe's 28-year rule.

Mr Mugabe was the only candidate in the June 27 run-off vote after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out citing state-sponsored violence against his party.

G8 leaders slammed the poll yesterday. Mr Bush called it a sham, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called it illegitimate and said she would back more sanctions.

"There's growing support for sanctions against the Mugabe regime being stepped up," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters. But Mr Berlusconi said he preferred a deal between Mr Mugabe and the opposition.

Notebook - Leaders meet inside, wives meet outside

While leaders of the world's rich nations negotiated in a luxury resort yesterday over how to resolve the world's woes, outside life went on, if not as usual, then at least pretty much as planned.

An amusing afternoon

First ladies had fun with tea, sweets and kimono as their husbands attended the summit, even if their events were a little more low-key than they would have been had the eye-catching Carla Bruni, wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, attended.

Japan's first lady, Kiyoko Fukuda, dressed in a blue kimono, performed a traditional tea ceremony, whipping bitter green tea with a short bamboo whisk and serving sweets made of arrowroot starch.

The wives, including US first lady Laura Bush and Britain's Sarah Brown, giggled as they made tea of their own and served each other, awkwardly bowing and rotating the cups.

They also watched a Japanese model being dressed in a layered and extremely heavy junihitoe kimono, usually reserved for royalty.

Local tastes

As the G8 leaders rolled up their sleeves and got down to some serious negotiations, so too did the area's chefs, challenged to please the palates of the eight and spouses, not to mention feed the thousands of officials, media and security folk who swirl around such events.

The menus for the VIPs have focused on local ingredients including hairy crab (for last night's bisque), asparagus, lamb, all manner of vegetables and "wild leaves from around here". And of course regional sake rice wine.

Foggy foggy night

While inside the hotel G8 leaders were trying to find clarity on some of the world's most complex problems - soaring oil and food prices, global inflation, African politics and climate change - outside a thick fog was building.

High atop a mountain in northern Hokkaido, the luxury resort housing the summit was shrouded in fog by the time of the evening's festivities.

Still, the leaders shrugged off indoor seats in front of a wall of windows and stepped out onto the hotel patio to watch traditional Japanese dances and a fireworks display under a steady drizzle and with minimal visibility.

Make a wish

What do world leaders wish for when they make a wish? G8 leaders were invited to give it a try as part of the Japanese tanabata celebration coinciding with their summit.

The leaders wrote a wish on a piece of paper and tied it to a bamboo tree in a ritual based on a Japanese myth of two star-crossed lovers condemned to meet only once a year in the Milky Way, on July 7.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wish, on the third anniversary of the bombing of London, sought an end to poverty and an end to terrorism.

US President George W. Bush also took a global theme, asking for "a world free from tyranny".

Birthday boy

US President George W. Bush celebrated his 62nd birthday just before arriving in Hokkaido on Sunday. White House staff gathered in the conference room on Air Force One to celebrate his birthday with a coconut cake carrying one candle.