Acrimony as G8 summit winds down

GROUP OF EIGHT leaders wound up a summit that adopted a raft of anti-terror, trade and development measures but saw a hoped-for display of unity punctured by new trans-Atlantic squabbles.

Before leaving their exclusive retreat, leaders issued a day pass to their rich nations club to counterparts from Africa, and found time to request a new bid by the diplomatic quartet on the Middle East to kick start peace talks.

However, they will head either for home, or the funeral of ex-US president Ronald Reagan today, still divided over Iraq, despite a United Nations resolution on Tuesday granting Iraqi sovereignty.

The main business on the third and final day of the summit was a meeting by leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States with African counterparts.

G8 leaders were to endorse a series of proposals aimed at easing the crushing poverty on the continent and expected to renew their fight against HIV/Aids, that has devastated many African nations.

However, the Africans (presidents of Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) want to dispel suggestions they have arrived at this millionaires' private island retreat as beggars.

South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki lamented in an editorial in his country's ThisDay newspaper: "We will still be poor relations crashing the party."

A day after adopting President Bush's contentious plan for social and political reform in the Middle East and North Africa, the leaders renewed a push to get stalled peace talks moving between Israel and the Palestinians.

In a statement, the leaders welcomed Israeli plans to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank and pledged to "restore momentum" to an international roadmap aimed at ending the conflict.

The G8 called upon the quartet of diplomatic powers, including the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, "to meet in the region before the end of the month".

The summit had been billed as a chance to consign old animosity over the US invasion to history, after the West closed ranks to pass a new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq Tuesday. But diplomatic brushfires broke out almost immediately among the plush cottages of the top-scale Sea Island resort, even as Bush led Iraq's new interim ruler Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar onto the world stage.

Mr Bush and French president Jacques Chirac yesterday failed to patch up their row over NATO in Iraq, after the US leader had suggested an expanded role in the occupation, a notion immediately shot down by the French. Casting around for areas of agreement after their face to face meeting, they settled on cheeseburger diplomacy, Chirac complimenting Bush on the fare served at this exclusive resort hosting the summit.G8 leaders also called on Sudan to disarm militias they blamed for "massive human rights violations" in that country's troubled Darfur region.

Earlier in the summit, they endorsed an end-of-July target for an outline deal on the most divisive issues in global trade talks, unveiled measures to halt transfers of nuclear technology and endorsed airline security improvements.

Discord surfaced, however, over the issue of Iraq's mountainous debt, with European states resisting US calls to quickly forgive almost all of it.