World leaders unite to fight Aids and poverty

World leaders clamped a harmonious face on a summit simmering with Iraq war disputes today, striking a united front with pledges of billions of dollars to fight Aids and hunger in poor nations.

The meeting’s most closely watched moment was the welcoming handshake between French President Jacques Chirac and US President George W Bush, whose wartime differences led to angry recriminations on both sides of the Atlantic. They greeted each other with polite smiles, a brief handshake and small talk before walking into a luncheon with other presidents and prime ministers.

Chirac, at a news conference later, praised Bush for getting Congress to pass a $15bn (€12.8bn) spending increase to combat Aids in the developing world.

“Bush took a decision in this area that I would not hesitate to call historic,” Chirac said. He said France would triple its Aids spending to €150m, and European Union officials said the 15 member nations are expected to commit about €1bn in new funds at a summit in Greece later this month.

In an annual summit ritual, tens of thousands of protesters staged demonstrations in French and Swiss regions beyond the heavily guarded security perimeter of the lakeside summit. They supported causes from anti-globalisation and environmentalism to forgiveness of Third World debt and fears over genetically modified foods.

Demonstrators blocked traffic for hours on bridges and highways around Geneva, across the lake from the meeting. Swiss police officials estimated the crowd at 50,000 - protest organisers said it numbered 120,000.

Inside the summit, there was a concerted effort to get beyond Iraq.

“Everybody talked positively. Nobody talked about the past,” said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, attending his 10th and final summit. “Everybody was concentrating on creating a mood of solidarity.”

White House officials suggested Bush was taking a wait-and-see approach about his relationship with Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, another ardent opponent to the war. In the lead-up to war, both France and Germany insisted that UN weapons inspections should have continued in Iraq and that diplomatic options had not been exhausted.

It was a different matter, though, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also opposed the US-led drive to depose Saddam Hussein but, in Washington’s view, was not confrontational about it.

Putin and Bush held a reconciliation meeting earlier today in St Petersburg, Russia, where they celebrated ratification of a major nuclear arms agreement and proclaimed their close friendship.

“Strange as it may sound,” Putin said, the United States and Russia have even strengthened ties – a point that Bush was happy to echo.

“We will show the world that friends can disagree, move beyond disagreement and work in a very constructive and important way to maintain the peace,” Bush said.

The annual summit of industrialised nations brought together the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia at a spa on the banks of Lake Geneva.

They were joined on the opening day by leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Africa and developing countries such as China, India and Mexico – a move intended in part to answer the criticism of anti-globalisation protesters that the G-8 was a rich country’s club insensitive to the needs of poorer nations.

Chirac’s spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna, said the leaders were not avoiding talking about Iraq, but were focusing on the challenge of rebuilding Iraq rather than the fractious debates of the past. “

We have not changed our point of view. Neither has the United States,” she said.

Bush and Putin, at their news conference in St Petersburg, urged North Korea and Iran to halt development of nuclear weapons. They went out of their way to minimise differences.

“The fundamentals between the United States and Russia turned out to be stronger than the forces and events that tested it,” Putin said, Bush nodding in agreement.

Despite differences, Bush was challenging allies to combat terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He also pointed out that the United States will spend about $1.4bn (€1.2bn) on famine relief, and challenged other nations to increase spending, officials said.

Bush was urging Europeans to give up their opposition to genetically modified food and he pressed for lowering agricultural trade barriers.

Chirac met one-on-one early today with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was making his first foreign trip since he took office in March. It was also the first time China has attended the annual summit of the world’s seven richest industrial countries and Russia. Bush chatted with Hu over a lunch of the G8 leaders and talked with him later about the campaign to halt North Korean’s nuclear program.

Bush will leave the summit tomorrow, a day early, to fly to the Middle East to promote the US blueprint for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He will meet on Tuesday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister, and leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain.

On Wednesday, Bush will travel to Aqaba, Jordan for a summit with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.