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viewpoint: weighty issues but little progress
G8 finance ministers fail to warm to task in icy Moscow
Alan Beattie
2/16/2006
One of the few advantages of meeting in an ice-bound Moscow in February is the salutary reminder of the downsides of energy shortages. Russia, whose membership of the Group of Eight (G8) countries is somewhat controversial, has been gripped by a winter that was blisteringly cold even by its own impressive standards.
Last Saturday's meeting of G8 finance ministers, in a hotel overlooked by the brooding towers and crenellated walls of the Kremlin, was some distance from the leading edge of actual international policy-making. It was a preparatory planning meeting for another finance ministers' planning meeting in June before the actual G8 heads of government meeting in St Petersburg in July.
Vladimir Putin, Russian president, who will host the St Petersburg summit, displayed an unconscious but impeccable sense of comic timing. Choosing to focus the year's discussions on energy security may have seemed sensible last year, particularly since it is one of the issues on which Russia has something tangible to contribute to the G8. But spending the first few weeks of the new year attracting opprobrium from across Europe for threatening gas supplies as the result of a spat with Ukraine was not, perhaps, the best way for Russia to kick off the discussion.
Applying the same principle across the G8, as some observers pointed out, could mean the US focusing its G8 presidency on global warming or France using its turn in the chair to discuss agricultural liberalisation.
So many are the issues that now exercise finance ministers, from development aid to infectious diseases to terror finance to trade, that some seemed to receive rather short shrift last weekend. The agenda for the meeting envisaged a conversation about the financing of terrorism and money-laundering that lasted a grand total of 10 minutes, for example, while a rather unexpected Russian initiative to discuss good governance in public finances was given 15.
Russia's membership may be appropriate to discussing security and energy issues. But for financial matters, it looks slightly out of place, Moscow being a debtor rather than a creditor to the Paris Club of rich nations. The "deputies' meeting" of high-level officials from the Group of Seven -- the G8 excluding Russia -- in London earlier this month was regarded as something of a snub to Moscow, though John Snow, US Treasury secretary, perhaps improbably, claimed not to know anything about the deputies' meeting.
Even for energy issues, some officials said it was not clear that the G8 was the most appropriate forum. European countries including France have been concentrating on getting Russia to ratify the Energy Charter Treaty, which lays down rules for maintaining energy supplies. True, Russia has signed and not ratified the charter, but then two other G8 members, the US and Canada, both of which are oil producers, have not even signed it. Though all attending were eager to talk in general terms of energy security, the issue of gas supplies through the Ukraine is a European problem.
Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Indian finance minister, was invited to a special session of the G8, along with China and Brazil. Coming from a big oil importer, he was less polite about the history of turning the warm words of G8 communiqués into action. "They have been saying this for the last year," Mr Chidambaram said. "Producers and consumers must come together and have a dialogue. The IMF [International Monetary Fund] says it but it has not happened. Secretary Snow says it all the time but it hasn't happened."
Some ministers perhaps had other things on their minds. Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, is usually eager to use G7 and G8 meetings as a public platform from which to expound his latest scheme for helping the developing world. (FT Syndication Service)
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