13th June, 2007
OK – so I’m biased, but our man seems to be the sharpest in the pack, don’t you think?
View Blair Showdown With Putin over his threat to aim nuclear weapons at European cities.
[Pic below: Bush, Merkel, Blair, Prodi, Sarkozy(?)]
[Pic right: Six of the Eight]
The G8 – What is the G8?
Almost universally Tony Blair has been hailed as the hero of the hour at the G8 in Germany. Under Angela Merkel’s chairmanship, it was a meeting to firm up the agenda of Blair’s 2005 Gleneagles meeting, and to take those issues forward. Africa and climate concerns
were, as in 2005, top of the agenda.
[Pic right: Watching Putin]
PUTIN
- Discussion pre-G8: Listen to “Putin’s drive for super power” – 5th June, 2007
Telegraph opinion on Putin’s reasons for threats to target Europe if USA builds its nuclear umbrella. President Putin’s threat to target nuclear missiles at European cities ahead of the German-hosted G8 summit is part of his aggressive strategy to secure Russia world super power status alongside the US as Con Coughlin tells Robert Miller. He says that relations between Blair and Putin are “pretty sour”, but people expect G8 to deliver something on climate change.
- Article: UK / Russia relations – Cordial but still Icy
by Andrew Grice in Heiligendamm and Anne Penketh – The Independent
Excerpt:
“Relations between Britain and Russia remain in the deep freeze after a cordial but frosty 50-minute meeting between Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders, who met for a one-to-one session yesterday at the close of the G8 summit in Germany, failed to resolve widening differences over democracy and human rights in Russia, its economic and energy policies and its refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB agent Britain wants to face trial over the death by poisoning in London of the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
Mr Blair, who went out of his way to cultivate Mr Putin even before he came to power in Russia, admitted he could not see the gap between London and Moscow being bridged in the near future.
Mr Blair admitted the atmosphere in his meeting was “perfectly cordial” at a personal level but went on: “There are real issues there and I don’t think they are going to be resolved any time soon.”
Asked if he believed the Russian leader was listening to his criticism, Mr Blair gave a long pause before replying: “What will matter is if we are able to start resolving some of the issues that are outstanding, because in the end this is a question of actions rather than words.”
The two leaders did not have a detailed negotiation over the Litvinenko case, although British officials said Mr Blair had made the point forcibly that UK-Russia relations were being damaged by Russia’s actions on a range of issues, including the Litvinenko affair.But Mr Putin hit back by criticising outspoken comments from UK-based exiles who “call for unconstitutional change of the government in Russia”, Mr Peskov said, referring to the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. The G8 summit had opened amid talk of a new Cold War, after Mr Putin threatened to re-target missiles against Europe in retaliation for the US plans to station its missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.”
Excerpt:
“Leaders of the world’s G8 group of richest industrial nations have agreed a deal at their summit in Germany to tackle climate change. Chief political correspondent Toby Helm tells Robert Miller the promise to make “substantial” reductions in carbon emissions is groundbreaking and Tony Blair played a big part in brokering it.
Excerpt: “Blair finally delivered something from his relationship with Bush. They are talking about Blair becoming an environmental czar on the world stage.”
So Blair’s new job, as predicted on this site months ago, is firmly on the cards!
NOW you can see why Bush went along with it at the G8. How could HE let down his best political friend, when he, next to Blair (and me), cannot wait for our PM to make an impact on the world stage as only he can. And it’ll mean that Blair is still around in world politics. Today Bush needs Blair more than vice-versa.
The Prime Minister has welcomed an agreement at the G8 summit on how to tackle climate change and global warming. Speaking to journalists after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Blair said that leaders of the major industrialised nations had taken “a major, major step forward”.
There was consensus on the need for a new global deal, to include nations such as America, China and India, with large cuts in greenhouse gas emissions at its heart, he said.
“The possibility is here for the first time of getting a global deal on climate change, with a substantial cut in emissions and everyone in the deal, which is the only way that we are going to get the radical action on the climate that we need.”
Asked about the level of cuts envisaged, the Prime Minister said that “serious consideration” would be given to the goal of halving emissions by 2050.
In his last G8 summit as Prime Minister, Mr Blair said he was “both surprised and very pleased” at what had been achieved on climate change since the Gleneagles summit in 2005.
The agreement reached in Germany would have been an unimaginable aspiration just a few years ago, he said.
Was Bush sick as a parrot?
Geoffrey Lean and Raymond Whitaker – opinion – Published: 10 June 2007
‘So is the world a better place after the G8 summit? The answer might surprise you. George Bush’s usual attempts at stalling any significant action over climate change in Heiligendamm were weakened by the Blair-Merkel-Sarkozy united front.
When George Bush first met Angela Merkel, shortly after she became the Chancellor of Germany 18 months ago, he thought he had finally found a friend from “Old Europe”.
Believing – like British ministers at the time – that the right-wing former East German would be far less interested in the environment than the red-green government she had toppled – he patronisingly suggested that they could forget the Kyoto protocol.
“Mr President, you are mistaken,” Mrs Merkel announced, drawing herself up to her full 5ft 8in. “I am one of those responsible for the protocol.” And she told him how, as her country’s environment minister, she had chaired the meeting that had made the crucial breakthrough on the road to Kyoto, and then led its negotiating team when the treaty was agreed.
Over the past six months, the increasingly embattled President has had plenty of opportunity to remember his faux pas. For the Chancellor – the youngest person, as well as the first woman – to hold the office, has constantly harried him to drop his obstruction to negotiating new international measures through the United Nations for when the protocol’s targets expire in 2012.
Indeed, she has formed a double act with Tony Blair. Between them they recruited a formidable team of allies including the European Union President, Jose Manuel Barroso, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy and even Rupert Murdoch – and joined forces with the Republican governors led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, congressional and business leaders, and even leaders of the religious right putting pressure on Mr Bush at home.
The object of the campaign – which, for Mr Blair, goes back more than two years – was to get the Toxic Texan to give enough ground at last week’s G8 summit in Heiligendamm, on the German Baltic coast, to make possible a breakthrough in the UN negotiations this year. It helped to make it one of the most cliffhanging G8 summits ever. Once it was possible to sum one up before it even began, as the final communiqué would have been settled in advance, and the media swarm would have to scratch about in the “bilaterals”, the one-on-one side meetings among the leaders of the world’s seven largest industrialised economies, plus Russia, to find something to report.
Not this year. There was no previous agreement on the central topic of climate change. At the same time, activists, development organisations – and singers turned campaigners Bono and Bob Geldof – wanted Mr Blair to confront fellow summiteers over the targets they agreed at Gleneagles two years ago for aid to Africa. And on the very eve of the gathering, there suddenly flared up a dispute between Russia and the West which appeared to threaten a return to the Cold War.
It all got hammered out eventually with a bland, if sometimes incoherent, communiqué – but not without some dramas. The biggest was over climate change, when – just a few days before the leaders met – President Bush tried to derail the UN negotiations by proposing a series of American-led talks among the world’s top polluters with no more demanding a goal than vaguely aiming at agreeing a series of non-binding measures.
This spoiling tactic had been in preparation for months, with one of the President’s top climate hatchet men, James Connaughton, circling the globe trying to persuade other countries to sign up for it. And Mr Blair made things worse by appearing enthusiastically to endorse it. By the time the summiteers headed home on Friday evening, however, the Toxic Texan appeared to have lost on points. His sabotage attempt had been largely defused and he had been forced to cross several of his negotiating “red lines”. And Mr Blair and Mrs Merkel, though unable to achieve their stated objectives, had not had to cross “red lines of their own”, and managed tomaintain forward momentum towards a new climate change agreement.
Not that this is obvious from the communiqué, which makes depressing reading. The original German draft, as first reported in The Independent on Sunday in April, pledged to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by half over 1990 levels by 2050, so as to keep global warming to an extra two degrees Celsius – and called for a 20 per cent increase in energy efficiency by 2020 and “cap and trade” programmes (national allowances of greenhouse gas emissions which can be bought and sold).
None of this should have been contentious. The two-degree limit is the least scientists say will be necessary to avoid climate change escalating out of control: the 50 per cent cut is what is needed to meet it. The energy efficiency target is easily achievable with existing technology, and cap and trade was an American invention in the first place. But President Bush set his face against them. All that appears in the communiqué is a vague reference to cap and trade and a curious and apparently meaningless construction under which the leaders agree to “consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050”.
Thus far it looks as if the President won. But in fact he was forced to cross red lines in agreeing to any mention whatsoever of the 50 per cent cut or to cap and trade measures. And he was forced to give even more, previously unsurrenderable, ground, by accepting that climate negotiations should proceed through the United Nations with an agreement reached by 2009.
It took a massive effort by an alliance of Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy to achieve even this much. Mrs Merkel went first, over lunch with the President on Wednesday, getting him to scale down his diversionary plans and to accept that negotiations should continue through the UN. She then handed over to Mr Blair and Mr Sarkozy, who discussed tactics while travelling to a formal dinner at a nearby castle, and then jointly nobbled the President. The final act was played out over breakfast the next day when the Prime Minister and Mr Bush worked out the wording on the 50 per cent cut.
It all seemed too much for the President to stomach; he failed to attend the first session
the next morning with a tummy upset. But he emerged to meet the leaders of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico – also invited to the summit – and tell them that he was committed to taking action on climate change.
Set aside the desperate need for rapid action to bring global warming under control – or the Merkel-Blair campaign – and such progress is pretty pathetic. But compared to Mr Bush’s previous position it is dramatic. Not long ago he was resisting even holding talks about new negotiations on climate change. The momentum is also now against him, and his presidency does not have long to run.
Much now depends on whether Gordon Brown takes up the baton. So far he has shown little of Mr Blair’s commitment to a global deal, but he has been moving in that direction. He has promised to keep up the pressure on Mr Bush and sent his environmental adviser, Michael Jacobs, to key meetings in the run-up to last week’s summit. And he is considering plans for a beefed-up climate change unit at the heart of Government, in the Cabinet Office.
The plight of Africa has long been closer to his heart, and here again the summit hovered
between triumph and disaster. Two years ago, at Gleneagles, the leaders agreed to increase aid by $50bn (£25bn) a year by 2010. Some countries, including Britain, are on track to achieving this, but others – notably Italy and Canada – are falling behind and the target looks as if it will be missed by a full $22bn.
But Blair, Merkel – and, perhaps surprisingly, Bush – all put pressure on the laggards, and the slack could possibly yet be made up over the next three years.
The summit began with superpower tensions reminiscent of the Cold War. Russia has long muttered angrily about American plans to station elements of its missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland and, shortly before going to Heiligendamm, President Putin threatened to target Russian nuclear weapons at Europe if the US sited its radars and interceptors there.
President Bush insisted that the system was “purely defensive”, aimed not at Russia but at maverick states such as Iran and North Korea. Visiting the Czech Republic on his way to the summit, he said that the missile system was “not something we should hyperventilate about” – in fact, Russia should join in its development.
Of course, G8 summits can be as significant for what is not discussed as for what is. Despite the focus on Africa, there was only cursory attention given to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Russia stood firm against pushing through a deal on Kosovo’s final status without Serbian agreement And not a public word was uttered on Iraq.
By next year the cast will have changed. Gordon Brown will not be the only new face if Mr Putin’s repeated assurances that he will step down next spring are true. Mr Bush will be the lamest of ducks, with a presidential election campaign in full swing. And it can’t be certain that Romano Prodi, who has been at the top table as both President of the European Commission and now as Italian Prime Minister, can confidently make his booking.
Progress made. Could do better.’
BBC opinion – Was The G8 a success?
- Listen to Radio 4’s “Frontiers” 0n the science of climate change, broadcast on Wednesday 13th June, 2007. Listen here
Of course there are always going to be SOME detractors, although few this time. Bob Geldof seemed not to be too impressed. However, even he had to give some honour to Blair – “he went down all guns blazing!” The other G8 leaders? Geldof – “farcical”.
Tony Blair 
March 14, 2008 at 11:07 am |
[…] Climate Czar? […]