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Daunting Challenges Await At Bush's Last G-8 Summit

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The Associated Press

Published: July 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - WASHINGTON - The problems do not get any easier as President Bush attends his final summit with leaders of industrialized democracies.

Disputes over global warming, worries about soaring oil prices and uncertainty about Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions pose daunting challenges for Bush when he sits down with presidents and prime ministers Monday.

There are fewer than 200 days left in his term, and Bush's dwindling presidency is a major factor hanging over leaders from Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada at a Group of Eight summit in Toyako, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

And, as Bush was en route to Japan on Saturday, The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan was reporting the Group of Eight countries will strengthen cooperation to promote nuclear power generation as a way to curb rising crude oil prices.

The declaration will also state that the G-8 countries should make joint efforts to tackle the sharp rise in the price of oil, which is approaching $150 per barrel.

Atop the agenda at the G-8 meeting is reaching a deal that would set targets for reducing the pollution that causes global warming. But few expect major headway or concessions from Bush, who insists on holding China and India, fast-growing economies and among the world's biggest polluters, to the same emission-reduction standards as older, developed economies.
Japan Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda would like to emerge with an agreement on 50 percent overall reductions in greenhouse gases by 2050.

Bush planned a pre-summit meeting and news conference today with Fukuda, as well as separate meetings in the next few days with leaders of Germany, China, South Korea, Russia and India.

Michael Levy, director of energy security and climate change at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, said he did not expect breakthroughs on global warming, in part because other G-8 members realize Bush's days in office are dwindling.

Information from McClatchy-Tribune was used in this report.

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