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G8 leaders fail to agree on Kyoto
GENOA, Italy (CNN) -- World leaders have ended the three-day G8 summit, conceding they were unable to resolve U.S. and European differences over global warming. The draft of the leaders' final statement says all of the Group of Eight countries "firmly agree" on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but "there is disagreement on the Kyoto Protocol and its ratification," The Associated Press reports. The Kyoto pact is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. It was negotiated in 1997 by the U.S. and major industrialised nations, but U.S. President George W. Bush has since rejected it. Like other economic meetings since 1999 when demonstrators disrupted an international gathering of trade ministers in Seattle, Washington, the three-day summit held in Genoa, Italy was the scene of violent protests.
Italian officials said next year's summit in Alberta, Canada, would be scaled down, limited to 400 persons total for all eight countries. One protester was shot dead by police during an attack on a police vehicle on Friday. Italian police sources identified the dead man as Carlo Giuliani, 23, a Genoa resident originally from Rome. On Sunday morning, Italian police broke into the headquarters of the anti-capitalist group involved in protests at the Genoa summit. Around 10 activists from Italy, Spain, France and Britain were detained during the midnight raid on the Genoa Social Forum (GSF) and driven off in a police van, legal sources told Reuters. The raid came after riot police launched canisters of tear gas at about 2,000 protesters trying to breach a safety perimeter on Saturday afternoon and after one man was killed during demonstrations on Friday outside the Group of Eight summit. Leaders from the Group of Eight nations -- the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- issued a statement on Saturday expressing "sorrow and regret" at the killing and urging demonstrators to reject violence. Pope John Paul II, in a weekly address from his lakeside summer residence Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, said he felt "pain and sadness for the hostility that erupted" at the summit. "Violence is not the path to reach a fair solution to the current problems," the 81-year-old pontiff said. Earlier at the meeting, leaders pledged $1.2 billion to a new global fund to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases, especially in Africa. Missile defence was discussed in one-on-one meetings between Bush and Jacques Chirac, the French President and Gerhard Schroder, the German Chancellor, both of whom have been critical of U.S. plans to abandon the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty. But the discussions were said not to have been substantive. On the Middle East there was a strongly worded communique from the G8 leaders who backed the call by their foreign ministers for independent observers to be deployed. The leaders' statement said: "The urgent implementation of the Mitchell Report is the only way forward. The cooling off period must begin as soon as possible. "Violence and terrorism must stop. Third party monitoring, accepted by both parties, would serve their interests in implementing the Mitchell Report." Senator Mitchell's report called for an end to violence, a crackdown on militants by the Palestinian Authority and a freeze on the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Leaders said they were determined to draw the poorest countries into the global economy. "We are determined to make globalisation work for all our citizens and especially the world's poor. Drawing the poorest countries into the global economy is the surest way to address their fundamental aspirations," Reuters quoted the leaders' final statement as saying. They said they would seek "enhanced co-operation and solidarity with developing countries, based on a mutual responsibility for combating poverty and promoting sustainable development." |
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