Preview: G8 summit is key diplomatic challenge for savvy Merkel

By Shada Islam Jun 1, 2007, 14:36 GMT

Brussels - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has built up a formidable reputation as a tough and savvy negotiator. Her diplomatic skills will be severely tested, however, at next week's meeting of the world's leading industrialized nations.

Merkel, who chairs the Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Baltic coastal resort of Heiligendamm on June 6-8, initially planned to clinch agreement on tough new targets for combating global warming, increasing financial market transparency and earmarking fresh aid for Africa.

Instead, the meeting appears likely to be dominated by increasingly acrimonious East-West exchanges and US tough talking on climate change.

In addition, while leaders squabble over global politics inside, an equally fierce showdown is expected outside the summit venue between angry anti-globalization protesters and security forces.

G8 members include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, the United States, Canada and Russia. The European Commission is also represented at all meetings.

Dealing with an increasingly bad-tempered Russian President Vladimir Putin will be Merkel's most daunting challenge.

The Russian leader has responded to US plans to station elements of an anti-missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic by testing a new intercontinental missile.

He has also threatened to withdraw from the treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) a key post Cold War security pact.

In addition, Russia's ties with the European Union are at an all- time low, with Moscow refusing to lift an import ban on Polish beef, raging against Estonia's decision to remove a Soviet-era war memorial from the centre of Tallinn and opposing supervised-independence for the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo.

'We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race,' Putin said at a recent news conference in Moscow, adding: 'Our partners are stuffing Eastern Europe with new weapons...What are we supposed to do? We cannot just observe all this.'

Putin also recently appeared to compare the US to Nazi Germany.

US President George W Bush has so far kept his cool, arguing that he wants to deal with Russia as 'not an enemy regime but a friend.'

His Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described the difficult US-Russia relationship as a 'mix of cooperation and competition, friendship and friction.'

While Merkel and Bush may see eye to eye on the need to tone down Putin's confrontational Cold War-style rhetoric, the German chancellor and the US leader have their own differences over climate change.

Merkel has cautiously welcomed Bush's call for a new strategy on tackling global warming through joint action by the world's top polluters - including China and India - as a 'positive' step in the right direction.

But the German leader has made clear she will still press G8 leaders to commit to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and limiting the worldwide temperature rise this century to two degrees Celsius.

Other Europeans have taken a tougher line. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a recent interview that he wanted Washington to adopt a more ambitious position, including backing for binding emission targets.

Both Merkel and Barroso have said they hope the US will see the need to bring the United Nations into the process, adding that the G8 summit should provide a launching pad for the UN climate protection meeting in Bali in December.

Germany is also expected to face resistance to its strategy from the leaders of China and India who will attend parts of the summit. Other non G8 members at the meeting include the leaders of South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.

Meanwhile, newly-elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, attending his first international gathering, could sour G8 discussions on world trade by denouncing globalization and demanding more protection for French farmers.

World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy has shrugged off such comments as unhelpful in the drive to clinch a new trade liberalization deal by end-2007.

Lamy said he had a simple message for the G8 summit: Instead of bickering over breaking down trade barriers, leaders from the world's richest countries should 'Just do it!'