G-8 Delays Making Big Decisions

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

L'AQUILA, Italy -- The Group of Eight leading industrial democracies pushed many priorities of their summit here off to larger groups of countries, placing the next moves in trade negotiations, climate-change talks and containing Iran's nuclear program in front of the so-called G-20 and the United Nations in September.
In his parting news conference here, President Barack Obama took a swipe at both the G-8 and the United Nations as antiquated, as other leaders also talked of formalizing a new grouping that would add a half-dozen of the biggest developing nations to the current G-8.

"There's no sense those institutions can adequately capture the enormous changes that have taken place during those intervening decades" since their founding, Mr. Obama said. "The one thing I will be looking forward to is fewer summit meetings."
Senior White House officials said the president has more clearly defined expectations for the September meetings.
The nations gathered in L'Aquila did achieve one parting success, a $20 billion pledge over three years to overhaul food and agricultural assistance to the poorest countries. Only about half that pledge is new money, according to the White House, but it roughly doubles nonemergency agricultural assistance.
On Thursday, it had seemed that the total would be only $12 billion, below the level intended just days before. Instead, last-minute pledges came from Canada and the European Union, among other countries. Mr. Obama, in a Friday morning session, made an emotional, personal appeal, saying richer nations had an obligation to act. But he also said recipient nations had to acknowledge that they were complicit in their poverty, through corruption, a lack of transparency and other barriers to growth.
On Iran, Mr. Obama edged closer to an ultimatum, saying there would be consequences if Tehran continues to pursue nuclear weapons and shuns negotiations by the time the G-20 meets. "We're not going to just wait indefinitely .... and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act," he said.
On trade, nations agreed to a series of bilateral meetings at which developing countries will outline for which products and services they intend to maintain protective tariffs and other barriers, and which they will allow to compete globally. The idea, according to a U.S. official, is to achieve clarity to speed up global trade talks that the 17-nation Major Economies Forum pledged to complete by 2010.
The forum also pledged to deliver plans to the G-20 meeting to finance clean technology and reforestation programs to combat climate change, and to help poor countries adapt to an already warming world.
That demand was a surprise move sprung by Mr. Obama behind closed doors Thursday, to come up with something concrete after developing countries unexpectedly balked at accepting firm targets for emissions reductions.
Progress on all of the issues will depend in large part on Mr. Obama's sway both with the U.S. Congress and balky partners such as Russia. Congress on Thursday cut his aid request to help developing countries respond to climate change.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also struck a discordant tone after a week of wooing by Mr. Obama. He suggested no progress on Washington's arms control agenda is possible until Mr. Obama scraps the East European missile-defense site. "If there is no positive decision on this particular issue, than all others will also fail," he said.—Stacy Meichtry contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com