Bush Feels Heat of Climate Pact at G-8 Summit

At a summit already under siege by up to 100,000 protesters, President Bush found himself under political siege Saturday by his peers from the world’s wealthiest nations because of his controversial rejection of a global treaty on climate change.

The deep chasm between the United States and its closest allies threatens to overwhelm progress here on a fund for the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a new partnership to alleviate poverty in developing nations and an ambitious round of global trade talks scheduled for this fall.

Angering his peers, Bush at one point suggested that the final communique of the Group of 8 summit, to be issued today, make no reference to the Kyoto global warming treaty reached in Japan, European diplomats here said.

Fellow leaders told Bush often and bluntly that the United States must sign on to the global effort committing industrialized countries to cut emissions of “greenhouse gases,” senior diplomats from other G-8 countries said.

“The Europeans are united on this,” Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero said. “The split is with the United States.”

But the G-8 leaders were united on continuing their annual meeting in this Mediterranean port city, despite calls to end it prematurely after the shooting death Friday of Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester. Italy announced Saturday that it had opened an investigation of the police officer who twice shot Giuliani.

In an unusual move, the leaders of all G-8 nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States--issued a statement Saturday condemning “firmly and absolutely” the violence by “a small minority” that has consumed the birthplace of Christopher Columbus as well as other cities that hosted recent international meetings.

“It is vitally important that democratically elected leaders legitimately representing millions of people can meet to discuss areas of common concern,” the statement said. “Our commitment and our work goes on.”

Before meeting with French President Jacques Chirac, Bush called the loss of life tragic and criticized the demonstrators. “Those who claim to represent the voices of the poor aren’t doing so,” he said. “We have all been traumatized by the events.”

In contrast, however, Chirac said the elected leaders of the world’s most powerful nations “have to consider the problems that have brought tens of thousands of our compatriots to demonstrate their wish to change.”

The summit’s second day also succumbed to violence as demonstrators, whose numbers swelled overnight as thousands more poured into Genoa, clashed with police along the barricades protecting the “red zone” where the G-8 summit was being held.

“Assassins! Assassins!” demonstrators shouted at riot police. By day’s end, police reported that more than 400 had been arrested and more than 220 injured in two days.

Police early today raided a school that served as a headquarters for demonstrators, and protesters in return attacked a nearby station of the paramilitary police, Italian state television reported. Activists said officers seized computer disks. Police said they took iron bars, bricks and baseball bats.

The television report said 40 protesters were injured and 50 were detained.

The summit violence spurred at least two groups to formally withdraw from the demonstrations Saturday.

Irish rock musician Bono, who has become a champion of easing the debt of developing nations, said his organization decided not to participate. At the same time, he told reporters that the group, Drop the Debt, won’t stop campaigning for change.

“Violence is never right, but anger is understandable when facing the obscenity of the ever-widening gap on the planet between the haves and the have-nots,” he said.

CAFOD, a Catholic aid agency, also said it would not participate in the Saturday march because of the violence.

“We represent the millions of people who have no voice,” CAFOD official Fleur Anderson said. “That is no longer possible under these circumstances.”

But the protests have clearly struck a nerve well beyond Genoa. Sympathy protests were staged in Canada, Germany, Greece and Sweden on Saturday. Hundreds converged on a European Union building in Athens and chanted, “Murderers! Murderers!”

Isolated from the protesters, the talks inside the Ducal Palace, where the G-8 leaders were meeting, were focused on the Kyoto climate treaty.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said the two sides were far apart. “We will have to see how much we can get closer,” he said. “We will do our utmost to persuade the United States to come back on board and to have the accord take effect in 2002.”

A senior Japanese official later described the Saturday talks as a struggle. He said Koizumi told Bush that all countries must come under “one roof” to effectively lessen the impact of global warming. Bush announced in March that the U.S. was pulling out of the accord, labeling it “fatally flawed.”

“We have to achieve an agreement on which all countries can agree, and that should be done as soon as possible,” Koizumi said. “We have to try to make the United States participate in this process.”

As a result of the pressure, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said at a news conference here, the United States promised Saturday to propose an alternative or amendments to Kyoto by the next meeting of the U.N. conference on global warming, due to be held in Marrakech, Morocco, in October.

White House officials later said that the president has promised to put forward proposals “as soon as possible” and that the next opportunity to talk with allies is in Morocco.

Chretien said the United States had begun to move forward on Kyoto. “They agree with the goals,” he said. “The implementation is still problematic.”

At a U.S. briefing, a senior Bush administration official said: “We’re looking at a whole series of different approaches, and we’re doing that with all the effort that we can. We understand the need to come up with new ideas. We have a commitment to working cooperatively with countries on this issue.”

Nevertheless, the United States now looks ever more isolated--and stranded on alternatives. This isn’t the first time that it has pledged to come up with proposals on combating global warming.

After earlier promising to offer proposals for a May U.N. conference, the administration asked that the meeting be postponed two months. By coincidence, it is currently being held in Bonn. Now the Bush administration has in effect asked for another deferral.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush focused on poverty alleviation, the main theme of the G-8 summit, and what prosperous democracies can do to help.

“This is a time of great opportunity,” Bush said. “What some call globalization is in fact the triumph of human liberty across national borders.”

The president said the G-8 believes that the solution lies in spreading the benefits of free trade “as far and as wide as possible. Free trade is the only proven path out of poverty for developing nations. And when nations are shut off from the world, their people pay a steep price.”

Referring to the protesters, Bush said that limiting free global trade would block the poor’s best hope for improving their incomes and lives.

“Legitimate concerns about labor standards, economic dislocation and the environment should be addressed, and will be,” the president said. “But the developing countries have no need for protectionist policies that would condemn them to permanent poverty.”

He pledged that poverty alleviation is the priority of U.S. foreign policy. “We’re a wealthy nation with responsibilities to help others,” Bush said.

In afternoon sessions, the G-8 leaders tackled regional issues, including the Middle East, ethnic conflict in the Balkan nation of Macedonia, and the Korean peninsula. The eight leaders described the escalating Mideast violence as alarming and supported the deployment of “neutral” monitors.

They also encouraged North and South Korea to intensify their fledgling dialogue and urged reconciliation efforts in Macedonia.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this report.

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