Sources close to the meeting said the meeting had been eviscerated of any controversy to help get international diplomacy back on track after the US-led war against Iraq set three of the G8 -- France, Germany and Russia -- against their partners Britain and the United States.

A draft final communique, due to be released on Sunday, will stand by the outcome of the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, which made ringing but fudge-filled commitments on hauling poor countries out of poverty, poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water.

But references to the UN's Kyoto Protocol on climate change -- the issue that triggered a huge row two years ago between the European Union (EU) and the United States -- have been bleached out.

And efforts by Germany for the meeting to push for tighter regulations on oil-tanker safety and liability, after two decrepit single-hulled tankers foundered on France's Atlantic coast in just three years, were nixed by Japan, the sources said.

Green activists were to meet the ministers Friday and anti-globalisation protestors were to stage a "counter forum" on Saturday in the French provincial town of Angers, where the meeting was initially scheduled to take place before it was shifted to Paris for security reasons, a decision made at the height of the war.

At a press conference on Thursday, campaigners spat out their anger at French Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot, who took the helm of France's environment affairs after conservatives romped to victory in the elections last year.

France is current chair of the G8 and is keen to repair ties with the United States that were frayed by the war.

"France has no concrete policy or funding for the environment but you can expect it to come up with some fancy talk about its international commitments at the G8," said a Green Party spokeswoman, Marie-Helene Aubert.

European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom told AFP in an interview that the war had inevitably tinged the tone and content of the G8 talks.

"Don't you think that at times like these, every meeting where the US, the EU and Russia can actually meet, sit down and talk to each other is helpful? Let's look at it that way," she said.

Heading the US delegation, according to the organisers, is Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who is making a rare foray into the international arena.

The United States came under pressure from a United Nations watchdog on Thursday about the worsening environmental crisis in Iraq.

The report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said pollution, sewage-tainted water and mounting piles of rubbish and medical waste were posing growing health problems for the Iraqi public.

And it also challenged the United States to identify sites where depleted uranium shells had been fired and to advise civilians on avoiding exposure to those munitions.

The G8 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, plus the European Commission.

SPACE.WIRE