Meetings with Bush, Putin on PM's heavy agenda at G8

New Delhi, July 8 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaves for St Petersburg later this week to attend the G8 summit of industrialised nations with a heavy agenda that would include meetings with Presidents George Bush of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Dr Singh is also expected to hold talks with some of the other leaders of G8 that comprises Britain Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada, besides the US and Russia, on the margins of the July 15-17 summit, whose main agenda is global energy security.

At their talks, Dr Singh and Mr Bush are likely to apprise each other of the steps taken by their countries to take forward the historic but controversial July 18, 2005, deal for cooperation in civil nuclear energy.

While the US Senate and House committees have recently given the go-ahead for amending American laws for the proposed cooperation, ''productive'' talks were held between top officials of New Delhi's nuclear establishment and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for formulating India-specific safeguards for 14 of its 22 thermal nuclear reactors which would be thrown open for international inspections under the deal.

International trade would also be in focus during the summit as the G8 leaders are expected to make efforts to break the deadlock over the Doha round of WTO negotiations. The recent round of negotiations held in Geneva ended in an impasse on the issues of the US and other industrialised nations cutting domestic subsidy for agriculture and developing nations reducing tariff on industrial goods.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy is expected to be at St Petersburg during the summit. Leaders from the European Union (EU), South Africa, China and Brazil, besides India, are special invitees to attend an ''outreach meeting'' with G8 leaders, who held their meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, from July 6-8 last year and discussed steps to check climate change and reduce poverty in Africa. The Gleneagles summit had been held despite the serial terrorist bomb attacks in London on July 7.

The controversy arising from Iran's reported nuclear ambitions is also expected to come up at the G8 meeting, reports received here said.

The run-up to the summit has been marked by a running feud between the US and Russia, with American Vice President Dick Cheney warning Moscow against backsliding on democracy and using oil and gas supplies as ''tools of intimidation or blackmail'' against its neighbouring European nations.

This provoked Mr Putin to retort, reportedly describing the US as a wolf which ''knows whom to eat and is not about to listen to anyone'' and pointing out that the potential for conflict in the world continued to grow.

Despite the bickerings, the G8 is reportedly planning a massive expansion of nuclear power generation in their respective countries and help developing countries that shun nuclear bombs to embark on similar programmes.

According to media reports, an ''action plan'' for global energy security is expected to be adopted at the summit, envisaging a network of nuclear fuel plants in G8 countries and sale of reactors to developing countries.

Education and disease prevention are also on the agenda of the summit.

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