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Britain's Blair prepares for charm offensive to Italy ahead of G8 summit
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  • LONDON (AFP) May 26, 2005
    British Prime Minister Tony Blair will face the first foreign test of his third term in office Friday when he travels to Italy in a bid to win support for an ambitious plan to help Africa and fight climate change at a G8 summit in July.

    Blair is due to hold talks with his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi in what analysts described as the easiest leg of a charm offensive that will send him on a series of trips in the coming weeks to Europe and the United States.

    The two leaders are also likely to discuss Britain's EU budget rebate, imminent referendums on the EU constitution in France and Holland as well as the situation in Iraq -- where both countries have troops.

    The focus, however, will be on fighting poverty in Africa and global warming as time is running out for Blair to form a consensus on the issues at the July 6-8 talks in Gleneagles, Scotland between the Group of Eight powers.

    With Britain holding the G8 presidency as well as that of the European Union from July 1, the stakes have never been higher for the prime minister, whose reputation as a world leader is on the line if he fails to deliver.

    "He is desperately trying to get a consensus ahead of the G8 summit because the two things that he has set as priorities -- climate change and Africa -- appear to be falling apart," said Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of the think-tank Chatham House.

    "It is not just that he does not have the United States on board... but it seems there are big differences with the European members of the G8 and that's clearly something that he needs to rectify very quickly," he told AFP.

    The G8 nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- agree on the need to clear the 80-billion-dollar debt burden owed by developing nations to bodies such as the IMF and World Bank.

    They disagree, however, on how that debt forgiveness should be financed. The United States opposes a British-led push for the IMF to sell gold reserves, or a Franco-German plan to tax international airline tickets and jet fuel.

    Similarly, there are divergences on how to combat climate change, with Washington still unwilling to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

    "Unless you're ambitious about those things, you're not going to achieve progress," Blair's spokesman told a news conference in London.

    "There is a real focus on making genuine progress on these two areas and people should wait for the outcome from Gleneagles," he said.

    But Bulmer-Thomas said Blair's failure so far to woo US President George W. Bush over to his way of thinking has weakened his impact on Europe.

    In addition, Blair's influence as a prime minister is waning as he has pledged to step down at the end of his record third term in government.

    "He is not yet a lame duck," said Bulmer-Thomas.

    "They admire the fact he has won three elections... but he has not got the same aura of invincibility around him that he once had."

    The choice of Italy as his first port of call was a wise one, as the position of the Italian government over aid to Africa and cutting carbon dioxide emissions is not cast in stone, noted the analyst.

    "In a sense it should be the easiest of the countries to win round to the British perspective," he said, noting that Blair enjoyed a much closer personal relationship with Berlusconi than other European leaders such as France's Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder of Germany.

    "To have two of the G8 members to be singing from the same hymn sheet at this stage would be very helpful," said Bulmer-Thomas.

    At the same time, Berlusconi may not be as welcoming to British advances as usual after his football team AC Milan lost its chance to be crowned European champions following its defeat in a dramatic final by Britain's Liverpool.




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