New Delhi, July 15
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is leaving tomorrow morning for St
Petersburg in Russia to participate in the G-8 summit which will
discuss a wide range of issues including terrorism and energy security
in view of spiralling crude oil prices.
The event would also provide an opportunity to the Prime Minister
to interact with leaders of the eight most powerful and developed
nations and hold bilateral meetings with them as well.
One such important bilateral meeting on the margins of the G-8
summit would be Dr Manmohan Singh’s talks with US President George
W. Bush. Since the Prime Minister is skipping this year’s United
Nations General Assembly in New York which would have thrown up an
opportunity for his bilateral meeting with Mr Bush, the Manmohan-Bush
meeting has been arranged in St Petersburg.
Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, in his special media briefing today,
said the St Petersburg G-8 summit was to address mainly issues
relating to energy security, the global infectious diseases, global
health problems, as well as education-related problems. In addition,
since Africa was a major theme at the Gleneagles Summit, this time,
there would also be a focus on Africa on the progress that has been
made on the implementation on some of the recommendations that were
made at the last summit.
In view of this, Congo would also be attending the G-8 summit this
time, besides the usual five countries - India, China, South Africa,
Brazil and Mexico.
Besides global security and terrorism, there would be pointed focus
on world trade, in particular the follow-up to the ministerial meeting
which was held in Geneva. Some of the international trade related
issues relating to the Doha Round would also be discussed.
“On each of these issues the developing countries, the outreach
countries, would have, in fact, quite a great deal to say. The
outreach countries have also been meeting amongst themselves and they
have harmonised their position on several of these important issues.
This will form the input also for the G-8 Summit,” Mr Saran said.
The idea is to have a meeting of the outreach countries tomorrow
evening. The next day virtually the entire forenoon, including lunch,
would be the Outreach Session where the G-8 Heads of State and
Government would have a chance to interact in a very informal, in a
very free ranging atmosphere with each other at the Outreach Session.
