Japan: Leaders Of Eight Most Powerful Nations Attending The G8 Summit Meeting Go Digital

Record ID: 4214

  • Title: Japan: Leaders Of Eight Most Powerful Nations Attending The G8 Summit Meeting Go Digital
  • Date: 23rd July 2000
  • Summary: Later the G8 leaders were treated to a colourful cultural show by the Japanese hosts, including traditional Okinawa music and a performance by some of Japan's top pop stars. Keen to show they are no cyber slouches, the G8 leaders also agreed to a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose polished summit debut dazzled his opposite numbers, to move with the times and start exchanging e-mail. Working briskly through a broad agenda, the Eight threw their political weight behind the goal of launching a new round of global trade talks by the end of the year and vowed to redouble efforts to stamp out infectious diseases such as AIDS and malaria that are killing millions in the developing world. On the foreign-policy front, leaders were still scratching their heads over an unexpected offer by canny North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to scrap the Stalinist state's ballistic missile programme in return for help on space exploration. "It's not clear to me what the offer is (and) what is being requested in return for it," U. S. President Bill Clinton said. Kim made the proposal during talks in Pyongyang with Putin, who gave what German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called a brilliant report to the G8 on his landmark visit to the North Korean capital, the first by a Kremlin leader. North Korea's missile programme has worried the West since it test-fired a rocket over Japan in 1998 and is a major reason why Washington is considering building a "Star Wars" national missile defence shield despite fierce opposition from Russia and China. Clinton, who also held bilateral talks with Putin, was careful not to reject the North Korean proposal out of hand. "I think it is something that needs to be explored," he said. Clinton, who started the day the day with a barefoot walk on the beach, will leave Okinawa early as soon as the summit ends on Sunday to return to marathon Middle East peace talks at his Camp David retreat outside Washington. It is Clinton's last G8 summit before he leaves office in January and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien offered generous praise at a banquet on Saturday evening. "You've been a great leader and I would like to propose a toast to a great president of the United States and a great leader of the free world. Good luck, Bill," Chretien said. Dancers in costumes from the time of Ryukyu kings who ruled Okinawa until the late 19th century greeted the leaders when they arrived at the recently restored Shuri Castle for its first state banquet since 1866. It was the snazzy pop style of Japan's most popular pop stars that got G8 leaders smiling. Mega-hit producer Komuro Testuya presented a group led by Okinawan Singer Amuro Namie performing a song specially commissioned for the summit by the late Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Obuchi's wife Chizuko was also at the performance, sitting quietly next to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The summit leaders dined on Okinawa garoupa with green papaya as well as a dish that might have been hard for some leaders to stomach, smoked pork cheek crepes. They ate green-tea blancmange to finish. But the charter was long on noble intentions and short on practical ideas, sparking the ire of development activists. "The poor, when hungry, can't eat cyber-cake," Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 UK, told Reuters minutes before members of the debt relief coalition set fire to a laptop computer on a beach in protest against the G8 initiative. "You need to start with the basics, food, housing, electricity and telephones. Then you can talk about computers," she said. "To talk about computers before you have given people the means of life is both hypocritical and dangerous. " Debt campaigners have been particularly angered by the $750 million price tag for staging the summit and two warm-up ministerial meetings. More than 20,000 police and eight gunships have been deployed to provide security for the meeting, which has so far passed off largely without incident. Recognising that poor countries will never be able to catch up in the IT race if they have to spend too much servicing their foreign debts, the Group of Seven industrial nations promised on Friday to breathe life into an ambitious debt reduction plan that has stalled badly since its launch it a year ago.
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  • Location: JAPAN OKINAWA NAGO SUMMIT OF BANKKU SHINRYOUKAN
  • Reuters ID: LDL0012DLGT2V
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
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  • Copyright Holder: Reuters Archive
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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