However, while debt relief and emerging markets took center stage, the group was unable to reach a specific agreement on just how to reduce debt in the world's poorest countries, and they remained adamant that the G7's membership would stay unchanged.

The G7 meeting in London ended Saturday with a joint statement by ministers from the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada declaring the need for greater cooperation to ensure global economic growth, adding that prospects for 2005 are likely to "remain robust."

Yet more importantly, the group pointed out that further cooperation with China and other developing countries was critical.

For one, the London meeting was the first time that ministers from India, Brazil, and South Africa were also invited to take part in part of the discussions, while it marked the second time that the Chinese authorities participated in the G7 finance ministers' meeting.

Moreover, the group stated that it would be meeting with ministers from North Africa and the Middle East at their next gathering in July, thereby expanding the number of participants still further.

Granted, the G7 members made clear that they weren't going to expand their club membership any time soon. At the same time, they publicly acknowledged time and time again the need to be more inclusive.

For while the G7 nations clearly enjoy a disproportionate amount of the world's wealth, collectively holding two-thirds of the global GDP yet having only 14 percent of the world's population, it has become evident in recent years that emerging markets are having a greater impact on the global economy.

But while most analysts expect the participation of India, Brazil, and other future invitees to be one-off, there is growing expectation that China will continue to be a fixture at the meetings and could even be invited to become a permanent member of the exclusive group.

For it may well be in the G7's interest to get China, which is now the world's seventh-largest economy, to have a vested interest in global growth. One of the biggest topics for discussion at the latest meeting was the Chinese foreign exchange system and the country's practice of fixing the yuan's rate to the U.S. dollar for the past eight years.

Currency analysts have argued that China has fixed its foreign exchange rate deliberately low, so that it can export its goods cheaply and attract multinational corporations to invest in the country so they too can manufacture products at a fraction of the price back home.

Granted, the G7 did not criticize the Chinese outright for fixing the yuan's rate, nor did it call for the country to float its currency immediately. In fact, the president of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet said at a press briefing following the meetings that "it is an ongoing dialogue. There is nothing that would be like a rapid exchange of views. It is much more of an ongoing dialogue."

Britain's Chancellor the Exchequer Gordon Brown, meanwhile, simply said that "we are all interested in the role China is playing in the global economy."

But the biggest specific breakthrough at the latest meeting was an agreement to provide debt relief to some of the world's poorest nations, even though they could not agree on just how such a massive write-off could be financed.

In its communique, the G7 said that it would consider providing "as much as 100 percent multilateral debt relief" to the most impoverished countries, even though both the United States and Japan, two of the biggest creditors in the world, refuted Britain's proposal of canceling $70 billion worth of debt owed to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions by raising money in international money markets for a so-called International Finance Facility. It also proposed the IMF to revalue its gold reserves to create funds to write off debt.

"The (United States) is committed to poverty reduction for heavily indebted countries, but we cannot support the IFF", said the U.S. Treasury's under-secretary for international affairs, John Taylor, who stood in for Treasury Secretary John Snow who was unable to attend the London meeting due to a bout of the flu.

Taylor also added that the Bush administration "is not convinced that gold sales are a necessary way" to raise capital for debt relief.

Germany's finance minister Caio Koch-Weser, meanwhile, pointed out that there was a deep and perhaps irreconcilable divide between the Europeans and the United States on the subject.

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