President Bush Departs G-8 Summit for Middle East Peace Talks

Leaders of the G-8, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, issued a number of declarations on issues ranging from the world’s economy to anti-terrorism efforts.

“We commit to pursue with strong resolve our fight to further improve the integrity of the international economy,” the G-8 leaders said in one of the joint statements from the summit, which began on Sunday and formally concludes Tuesday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters that part of Monday’s discussion was focused on European efforts to institute reforms that will foster higher and responsible economic growth.

“There is a general recognition that if we don’t change and reform our economies quickly we are not going to be able to survive with the same living standards in the modern world,” Blair said.

Leaders involved in the summit of the world’s largest industrialized democracies expressed optimism that their economies will rebound from recent sluggishness despite an apparent lack of progress on issues affecting deadlocked world trade negotiations or the sagging U.S. dollar.

On terrorism, the leaders called on the world’s nations to crackdown on small, shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles, called “Manpads,” which have been used in past acts of violence, such as the Israeli airliner that was nearly shot down in Kenya last fall.

The G-8 countries also addressed non-economic issues such as nuclear proliferation in Asia and the Middle East.

“We strongly urge North Korea to visibly, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle any nuclear weapons programs,” the declaration said. The group also expressed concern that Iran’s nuclear program could lead to the spread of illegal weapons.

G-8 leaders asserted that the deep divisions over the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq were in the past and that it was time to move forward in their relations.

“A united Europe working with America can do a lot of good … on such issues as fighting terror, working on matters such as proliferation. We can do a lot of good to help those who suffer,” President Bush said of the summit.

On Monday, President Bush met with French President Jacques Chirac, in one of the first face-to-face meetings between the two leaders since their strong disagreement over the path to war in Iraq.

In a sign of recovering relations, Chirac told President Bush he will send French special forces to operate alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“This decision taken by France corresponds both to a wish from the United States and a wish from our country to take part in the stabilization of Afghanistan, so it’s a shared interest,” said Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in nearby Switzerland to protest various actions of the large industrialized nations. The French spa town of Evian, where the summit was held, was closed to all outsiders.

Some of the demonstrations turned violent, leading to the smashing of windows and the looting of businesses on the otherwise docile streets of Geneva and Lausanne on Sunday.

“Within a few minutes … violent agitators carried out true urban guerrilla warfare and ravaged the center of Geneva, only to disappear and later melt into the peaceful demonstration,” Geneva’s head of Justice, Police and Security Micheline Spoerri told Swiss Television according to Reuters.

President Bush left the summit a day early to engage in an intense round of diplomatic talks with leaders of Arab countries in an effort to jumpstart Middle East peace talks ahead of his three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

The president is scheduled to travel to the Egyptian resort Sharm el Sheikh, where he will meet with Abbas and a number of Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah bin Aziz.

During the talks, President Bush will encourage the leaders to accept Abbas as the new Palestinian negotiating partner, rather than Yasser Arafat, who was not invited to the talks.

On Wednesday, the president will hold three-way talks with Abbas and Israel’s Sharon in Jordan. There, he will encourage the leaders to use the peace “road map” to set up a Palestinian state by 2005 and end the Middle East conflict.

The president will conclude his trip on Thursday, June 5, with a visit to American troops in Doha, Qatar, central command for the war in Iraq.