Update1 :G8 Summit 2008

G8 summit opens with soaring prices, Africa aid as focus
Leaders of the world's richest nations opened a summit on Monday, aimed at battling skyrocketing oil and food prices, as pressure mounted on them to live up to their pledges to help Africa.Leaders including US President George W Bush gathered in the secluded spa resort of Toyako in northern Japan for a three-day session, with seven African leaders joining them on the first day to take up the plight of the continent.Riot police with shields stood under pouring rain and blocked some 50 protesters, who had camped out in the meadowlands from getting anywhere near the plush hotel where the world's top leaders were meeting.The closest that demonstrators got was the other side of sapphire-blue Lake Toya, where they shouted slogans in the improbable hope that leaders on the hilltop on the other side would hear them.European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso set the tone for the meeting by proposing the creation of a one-billion-euro EU fund to fight hunger and help farmers in poor countries with seeds and fertiliser.Inflationary concernsFood prices have nearly doubled in three years and set off riots in parts of the developing world, which are also being hit hard by record oil prices.In the closed-door session, African leaders pushed for the Group of Eight nations to make good on aid promises, saying the continent was bearing the brunt of rising food prices, a Japanese official who was present said."Because of the recent surge in food prices, African agriculture's supply and demand is not balanced and we would like the G8 to fully support" our cause," the official quoted African delegates as telling G8 leaders.Pope Benedict XVI also called on G8 leaders to focus on the world's weakest and poorest people, as they are "more vulnerable now because of speculation and financial turbulence and their perverse effects on the prices of food and energy."But aid groups said that some of the G8 nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - were walking away from earlier commitments.The club of rich nations promised in 2005 in Britain to boost aid to Africa by a further $25 billion by 2010. But UN and African Union figures indicate that only less than a quarter of that amount has been forthcoming.The Oxfam charity said that Canada in particular was working to water down aid pledges, with their position backed by France and Italy. "We can't let them step away from their promises," Oxfam activist Max Lawson said. "For rich countries this is peanuts. For African countries this is life or death."The G8 was joined for Monday's so-called outreach session on Africa by the leaders of Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.The G8 leaders were expected to focus at their main session Tuesday on soaring oil prices, which have imperilled global economic growth by stoking inflation, prompting warnings by aid groups not to forget Africa.In Mali, hundreds of activists from around the world gathered in the dusty town of Katibougou for a poor people's summit organised to counterbalance the G8.G8 leaders also pushed for action on Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe secured a sixth term last month in a widely condemned election in which his only rival dropped out faced with violence."I care deeply about the people of Zimbabwe. I am extremely disappointed in the election, which I labelled a sham election," Bush said after meeting with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, the head of the African Union.UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he would also hold talks with African leaders on the Zimbabwe crisis and press for movement in the fight against climate change."I hope the US ultimately should take (on) this leadership role. This is what the whole international community expects of the United States," Ban told AFP in an interview.The United States is the only major industrial nation to shun the Kyoto Protocol, as it pushes for more commitment from developing nations. Last year's G8 summit agreed that the leaders would "consider seriously" at least halving carbon emissions by 2050.
G8 must do more for food security: ActionAid
As the G8 summit starts in Japan, international NGO ActionAid has appealed to leaders of the world's eight richest countries to take urgent steps to end the current global food crisis."The ranks of the hungry have swelled to over 950 million in 2008, and ActionAid estimates that a further 750 million are now at risk of falling into chronic hunger," the NGO said in a statement on Monday. "As many as 1.7 billion people, or 25 percent of the world's population, may now lack basic food security," the statement added."G8 leaders can, and must take bold steps in Hokkaido to prevent world hunger spiralling further out of control," the NGO said, demanding an immediate revocation on subsidies to biofuels production."ActionAid's analysis shows that on current trends, 290 million people are hungry or at risk of chronic hunger because of the biofuels juggernaut," the NGO said."The US should immediately remove all subsidies for corn ethanol production and revoke the targets for increased use of biofuels that are driving the current increase in corn and other biofuels feedstock prices," Action Aid said."G8 leaders should support a five-year moratorium on the diversion of arable land into biofuel mono cropping. Instead of subsidizing biofuels the G8 countries should increase research, investment and incentives to scale up alternative renewable energy sources," the statement said.ActionAid alleged, "The G8 countries' failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is already wreaking havoc on agriculture through severe floods and droughts and rising temperatures. Weather effects have already reduced harvests in some countries. In some countries in Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could drop by as much as 50 per cent by 2020 because of climate change.""It will cost developing countries an estimated $67 million a year to tackle these and other risks, but so far, G8 pledges to the two voluntary climate change adaptation funds amount to only $158 million, less than a tenth of what Europeans spend annually on sunscreen," the statement added.The NGO called upon the G8 leaders to "confine future increases in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius by agreeing binding and time bound targets to reduce their own emission levels by at least 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020"."The US as the single largest polluter, must commit to reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and provide at least $55 billion of the estimated $67 billion annual cost of helping developing countries cope with climate change," the NGO’s statement said.Based on historic responsibility and capacity to pay, ActionAid has also demanded, "The G8 must commit to assist developing countries in accessing clean technology. Clean technology funding must be additional to overseas development assistance; should give preference to grants that provide incentives for developing countries to embrace a clean development path; and should give preference to small, locally controlled and managed projects that provide local energy access, particularly directed at women."

Will US attack Iran,

After reading an article on http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/itsonlyfair/latimes0370.html
Los Angeles Times , under the headline of :"No proxy war with Iran". This is an excerpt of my feelings & reaction coming from heart and mind.

Of course, if Seymour Hersh is right, in a pretty real sense the Bush administration has already attacked Iran. Under the auspices of a presidential finding promulgated last fall or winter, special operations forces and other operatives are inside Iran trying to stir up and capitalize on the kind of discontent that just might lead to regime change. It would be funny if it weren't more tragic to consider that the United States, based on its actions, has evolved into some kind of bizarre caricature of the dying Soviet empire, blundering about, spreading money and weapons and operatives around to try to subvert (the acolytes would say "liberate," just as the Soviet ideologists and propagandists did) various regimes that we consider dangerous or vulnerable or both.
Because advocates of the policies the U.S. seems to be following would speak to him only of high degrees of classification or in generalities, Hersh ended up having his most fruitful conversations with critics of the apparently disjointed and ill-thought-out activities your tax dollars (or your grandchildrens') are paying for. His perspective may be a little one-sided; there just might be a plausible strategy behind the expenditure of some $400 million. But critics of throwing it around among Ahwazi Arab, Baloch, and other dissident groups and seeking better intelligence about Iran's nuclear programs make a pretty good case that, at best, it is most likely money wasted, and could have untoward consequences.
So the U.S. government is arguably, if covertly, already at war with the Iranian regime. It's the kind of war that the other side can choose to avert its eyes from if it deems the threat trivial or if it wants to buy time to assemble the means of crushing it. If the covert war starts to do actual damage, the risk of incidents that could lead to serious military action rises, even if neither side really wants escalation.
For years I have been more skeptical than many antiwar people about the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran, and the fundamental disincentives still apply. Adm. Mike Mullen has let it be known that he would like more troops in Afghanistan, but for the time being he will have to extend tours of duty instead because so many troops are tied down in Iraq. Where is he going to get troops for action In Iran, unless the calculation is that some of the troops now in Iraq can be sent over to Iran without seriously destabilizing Iraq? (If so, it's an argument that the Iraqis, who are starting at least to talk like an independent entity, have things well in hand enough that U.S. troop withdrawals could begin quickly without leaving behind too much of a mess or triggering a bloodbath – though, of course, U.S. strategists don't have an especially impressive record of predicting unintended consequences in Iraq.)
Iran would be a much more difficult military target than Iraq was. The argument could be made that we could do enough just with bombing – not eliminate the threat forever of Iran getting a nuclear weapon but delay the likelihood by a decade or so – to make it a tolerable risk. But such an attack would not eliminate and might even increase the ability of Iran to respond in damaging ways – blocking the Strait of Hormuz, getting Hamas, Hezbollah, and maybe Syria to do damage to U.S. and Israeli interests and probably Israeli territory, not to mention mucking about much more extensively in Iraq. Killing civilians, especially scientists and technicians working on nuclear projects, would create an unpleasant backlash, but failing to do so would make it likelier that Iran could recover quickly and really get cracking on a nuke. Equipment can be replaced, but recovering specialized knowledge and experience might take a generation
All these fundamentals militate against starting a war, and it seems to be the case that a goodly number of military leaders are pushing back against the kind of rush to war most observers think Cheney would like to initiate. Still, in recent weeks we have seen a number of incidents that suggest the possibility of serious military action, whether we get there by design or by stumbling into it. For instance, there was the highly publicized Israeli exercise in which fighters and bombers flew toward the Mediterranean near Greece, the same number of miles in that direction as Iran is in another, as many pointed out.
Does that indicate that the Israelis are getting ready to strike, with or without U.S. cooperation? As Stratfor.com's George Friedman has pointed out, it seems unlikely. For starters, an aerial foray to Iran would have to pass over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace; indeed, refueling would have to take place in Iraqi airspace, which the U.S. controls. In addition, rescue helicopters would almost certainly have to be based in Iraq to be useful, which would mean the U.S. would at least have to facilitate and provide ground services.
The most fundamental factor arguing against a unilateral Israeli strike, however, is that by publicizing the war games over Greece, Israel utterly eliminated the element of surprise. When Israel took out the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981, it took everybody, including the U.S. and other allies, completely by surprise. Giving the Iranians a warning makes it likely the Iranians could do more to move activities to places that would not be seriously affected by conventional bombing and missile strikes, or at least only marginally damaged. Moving people out of harm's way would be easier and could be done more quickly than moving heavy equipment. Under most circumstances, you would think that if Israel were going to strike it would do everything possible to avoid signaling its intentions, and it has done the opposite.
Unfortunately, that might suggest that if the geniuses running the administration really think it would be useful to strike Iran before leaving office (and let the successor deal with the consequences), they might conclude that a unilateral U.S. strike is the least dangerous way to go. Sunni regimes in the region would be seriously upset if the Israelis struck, but they might be privately relieved and content with only token protests if the U.S. did it. At least one could make that calculation.
Consequently, while I still think the fundamentals, considered strictly in a coldly calculated realpolitik fashion, argue strongly against an overt U.S. military attack on Iran, it's possible to imagine people on the other side of the argument making a case that the Bushlet just might buy. And he might even be more likely to buy into it (or even be signaling that he wants the case to be made more aggressively), fancying it will enhance his precious legacy as a visionary leader not afraid to take decisive action, even – especially? – if it's not popular.
So here's one observer who's uncertain but a little fearful that what the late Gen. William Odom (and may his shade forgive me for not more publicly celebrating what he achieved in a life devoted to his country's best long-term interests when he died recently) called "America's Inadvertent Empire," might just blunder inadvertently into a conflict that could make the Iraqi debacle seem like a walk in the garden with plenty of time to smell the flowers.

PM leaves for G-8 Summit in Japan amid N-deal chaos

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday left New Delhi on a three-day visit to Japan for attending G-8 summit on whose sidelines he will meet US President George W Bush and discuss progress on the Indo-US nuclear deal. During his stay in Hokkaido island, he will meet leaders of various countries including Russia, Britain, Germany, France and host Japan for bilateral discussions.
Singh will attend a breakfast meeting with the leaders of G-8 and O-5 and issues like global climate change, food crisis and shooting oil prices will come up for review.
India is part of O-5 countries also called as Outreach Countries, invited to the G-8 summit. India has been attending the G-8 outreach meetings from 2003.
In a statement on the eve of his departure, the Prime Minister said that at the forthcoming summit, he would present India's perspectives on a wide range of global issues.
"I will, in particular, highlight the impact of the sharp rise in fuel prices on the global economy and the need for joint action by both producing and consuming nations,"he said.
Over the years, India's participation in the G-8/O-5 dialogue process has enabled it to articulate its concerns on a wide range of issues in a forthright manner, on an equal footing, he said.
"Today, India's views are heard with respect, and there is recognition of the fact that solutions to global issues require India's involvement," the prime minister said.
He said he will also participate in the meeting of the Leaders of Major Economies at which the issue of climate change will be discussed.
Singh was also looking forward to participating in an informal meeting of the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) leaders on the sidelines of the Summit.