27/05/2005

Blair plans to meet leaders of all G8 nations

Prime Minister Tony Blair has a hectic round of meetings planned ahead of the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in July.

Seeking support for plans to increase aid to Africa and measures to reduce global warming, Mr Blair is currently meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in a busy travel schedule ahead of the G8 Summit.

The talks with the Italian Premier mark the start of a gruelling schedule for Mr Blair. In the next few weeks he is to travel to the US, Russia, France and Germany in a bid to drum up support for the agenda from the big eight industrial nations as the UK hosts the summit in his capacity as the group's President.

Immediately prior to the G8 summit Mr Blair is to visit Singapore, and an official spokesperson said that the Prime Minister "would have done all that he could" and seen "all the people that he needed to see" in the day before he lands in Gleneagles.

Asked by reporters at a recent press conference if the bar had been set too high to resolve the issues, the PMOS said: "Unless we were ambitious we would not make progress. Unless there was a real clear idea of what needed to be done and we had set out our analysis, others like the Commission for Africa had set out their analysis and on Climate change we had set out the key things that we needed to see happen in terms of making progress.

"Recognising the problem, focusing on new technology and bringing in the emerging economies. Unless you were ambitious about those things you were not actually going to achieve progress."

(SP)

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