Aid for Africa to Be Discussed at G-8 Summit

President Bush and other leaders of the world’s most powerful countries are determined to use this year’s Group of 8 summit to launch what some are calling a Marshall Plan for Africa: billions of dollars in new aid to the poorest continent.

African assistance is expected to be the primary achievement of the 28th annual economic summit, which gets underway Wednesday at a remote resort in the Canadian Rockies.

Bush and the leaders of the other G-8 countries--Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada--also will spend considerable time at their first summit meeting since Sept. 11 reviewing the fight against international terror.

U.S. allies are going with plenty of questions about what Bush might have in mind in terms of expanding the war to Iraq and other countries.

The president, in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy on June 1, said the United States will strike preemptively against suspected terrorists or the states that support them if necessary to deter attacks on Americans.

Even before Sept. 11 elevated terror to the top of the summit’s agenda, violent street protests at last year’s summit in Genoa, Italy, had convinced Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien that a drastic overhaul in the annual meetings was needed.

He switched the location from a bustling city easily accessible to anti-globalization protesters to the tiniest site ever to serve as host for a G-8 summit--Kananaskis, Alberta, a remote village accessible by a single two-lane road.