Alan Friedman :
© International Herald Tribune, July 23, 2001
NEWS ANALYSIS: Leaders Start to Rethink the Big-Summit Format
GENOA For years now, critics of the Group of Eight summit
process have argued that the annual gatherings have moved far
away from their original intent, as an informal and small meeting of
world leaders aimed at coming up with coordinated policies to
maintain global economic growth and stability.
Instead, the annual G-8 meetings have become increasingly
extravagant and costly media events, with hugely expanded
agendas, the involvement of thousands of delegates and journalists,
and lengthy declarations that often contain more platitudes than
substance.
But the death of a young anti-globalization protester here amid
violent clashes - in which tens of thousands of police officers
battled anarchists armed with firebombs - marks a turning point in
the history of world summitry.
All summit talks, and not just among the G-8, have now become
lightning rods for anti-globalization demonstrators, with a small
minority of anarchists bent on violence overshadowing the peaceful
majority.
Combined with frustration at overly structured meetings, which the
leaders have been trying to simplify, the riots and devastation of
Genoa could herald change as early as next year.
"I think the format of the summit should be changed," said Prime
Minister Jean Chretien, the host of next year's meeting in Canada.
The current structure of G-8 meetings, he said at a news
conference in Genoa, "is too big and has grown too much, so that
we are now debating about everything, with long, long
communiqués."
A solution, Mr. Chretien said, would be to reduce the size of the
delegations to just 35 members per country.
The Canadian leader said that next year's G-8 summit meeting
would be held in Kananaskis, a tiny Rocky Mountain resort in the
province of Alberta that has only 350 hotel rooms.
The location would not only be easier to protect, he said, but
would also offer an atmosphere that encourages the "spirit of
Rambouillet," a reference to the first world economic summit
meeting, held in 1975 as a small-scale gathering at a chateau on
the outskirts of Paris.
Thus, the past weekend's televised scenes of tear gas, bloodied
faces, and burning cars, more reminiscent of wartime Beirut than
of the capital of the Italian Riviera, may prove to have been a
perverse catalyst for change. And Mr. Chretien's musings were
soon matched by other world leaders in Genoa.
On the one hand all of the G-8 leaders deplored the violence and
defended growth and free trade as the best way to help the
world's poor, and insisted that they had the right to meet.
"It's a tragic loss of life," said President George W. Bush. But he
criticized protesters, saying those "who claim to represent the
voices of the poor aren't doing so." He then took a law-and-order
line, adding, "It's also tragic that many police officers have been
hurt, men and women who have been trying to protect
democratically elected leaders and our necessary right to be able
discuss our common problems."
But others went beyond the pro forma and suggested that a
complete rethinking of the G-8 process was in order.
Even before the meetings began, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,
host of the Genoa talks, said that "this may be the last G-8 summit
as we have come to know them."
President Jacques Chirac of France, in contrast to Mr. Bush's
hard-line approach, said that "obviously we have all been
traumatized by the events" and stressed that "the elected leaders of
our countries have to consider the problems that have brought tens
of thousands of our compatriots, mainly from European countries,
to demonstrate their concern, to demonstrate their wish to
change."
Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said it was
worth "reflecting on the way we handle these kinds of meetings"
and also noted that "we must perhaps re-examine the scale of
these meetings."
The death Friday of Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester who
was shot by a policeman he appeared to be attacking, triggered a
worldwide reaction. The anti-globalization veterans of Seattle and
Prague suddenly found themselves with a martyr, and sympathy
protests exploded in European capitals on Saturday from
Stockholm to Madrid.
On Saturday night the G-8 leaders themselves reflected upon how
to restructure their summit meetings both for efficiency's sake and
to avoid giving a minority of demonstrators bent on violence a
global photo opportunity.
In Portugal, Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, a Socialist, called
on the G-8 to abandon what he claimed was "their egotistical,
short-term vision of international relations." Globalization needed
to be more humane, he said, warning that "the rich should be
concerned with the health of the poor, otherwise one day it will be
the poor who will take care of the health of the rich."
Giampiero Massolo, spokesman for Italy's foreign minister,
Renato Ruggiero, summed up the message this way: "There is no
doubt that this summit marked a turning point. In the future the
leaders need to be more focused and more targeted."
The rock star Bob Geldof, a campaigner for debt reduction for
African nations, was quick to condemn the violence and urge
demonstrators to remain peaceful. But he also had a message for
world leaders, which to some will seem naive and to others quite
reasonable.
"I am offended," Mr. Geldof said in Genoa, "by the tone of these
summits: democratically elected leaders with the panoply of
power, private jets, swishing through the 'red zone' in
motorcades."
The leaders, it would appear, have begun to get the message.