G8: Brown preparing for climate change talks chaired by Obama

UK aides happy with strong condemnation by G8 of treatment of British diplomats in Iran

Patrick Wintour in L'Aquila
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 July 2009 12.41 BST

Gordon Brown was today compressing a round of bilateral talks on Burma, the Doha trade round, Zimbabwe and climate change as he prepared for a major meeting this afternoon chaired by Barack Obama covering all the major carbon emitters.
His aides also expressed pleasure at the strong condemnation issued by the Group of Eight richest nations on Monday night of the treatment of British diplomats in Iran. It has been broadly agreed that there should be no further sanctions against Iran at this stage, although Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said the issue would need to be revisited in the autumn.
Brown yesterday met the new South African president, Jacob Zuma, and the two agreed that they should continue to support the power-sharing government in Zimbabwe.
The coalition formed by Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, and his former arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai, who is now the prime minister, is desperate to secure as much as $8bn over the next three years to breathe life into the economy. Zuma and Brown agreed to back the reformists in the government.
Brown also met Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, this morning. The two men agreed that the elections in Burma would not be credible if pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is denied the right to participate. Ban was denied the right to meet the democracy leader by Burma's military leaders last week.
At meetings today, world leaders from the G8 met those from the major developing nations South Africa, India, China, Mexico and Brazil to discuss the stalled world trade talks. The leaders are expected to agree that the world trade talks ought to be completed by the end of next year. But world leaders have made such commitments many times before, to little effect. There is some hope in British circles that the scale of the world recession, and the election of Obama, will help concentrate minds given the scale of the prize available to the world.
The G5 meeting of developing countries ahead of today's meeting called on the world's richest nations to tear down trade barriers they said were a drag on the world economy and to restore credit to the poorest countries.
"We will stress tomorrow the importance of maintaining adequate flow of finance to the developing countries and also of keeping markets open by resisting protectionist pressures," said India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
Britain is also privately pleased that Singh was re-elected since he is deeply immersed in the detail of the trade talks.