Plan to Secure Nuclear Weapons Opens Sea Island G8 Summit

SAVANNAH, Georgia, June 9, 2004 (ENS) - The leaders of the world's eight most industrialized countries are close to agreement on a plan to expand international efforts to locate and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, National Security Council spokesperson Jim Wilkinson said Tuesday.

Briefing reporters in Savannah, as the G8 leaders gathered on Sea Island for their annual Summit meeting, Wilkinson, speaking for the White House, said the plan would expand the Proliferation Security Initiative and strengthen the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Although the summit began Tuesday as President George W. Bush welcomed the other leaders to Sea Island, summit negotiations have been going on for some time, and a range of agreements already have been reached. The G8 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. A ninth entity, the European Union, is represented in all discussions as well.

Heading to the G8 summit at Sea Island, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and his wife Sheila Martin wave during their arrival at Hunter Army Airfield Tuesday. (Photos courtesy The White House except where noted)

Briefing reporters, a senior administration official noted that 62 countries gathered in Krakow, Poland last week to endorse the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and a set of principles that seek to prevent international trade in nuclear weapons materials and technology. At that meeting, Russia was named a member of the PSI core group, so now all eight of the G8 countries are part of the core group.

The official also expects the G8 leaders to endorse an expansion of the global partnership initiated at the 2002 G8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, to secure or eliminate weapons of mass destruction in the states of the former Soviet Union.

The G8 leaders are expected to welcome the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which calls on UN member states to criminalize activity related to weapons of mass destruction and improve export control systems in an effort to prevent international trafficking in these weapons.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi talks with children at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah on his way to the G8 Summit Tuesday.

He said that President Bush is working to "cut off the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology to any states that don't currently have it."

The senior official said the G8 leaders are expected to adopt a one year freeze on inaugurating new technology transfers to additional states until the G8 committees can develop a comprehensive strategy for regulating such transfers.

The official also said that the G8 leaders have agreed that safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be tightened by making the adoption of the additional protocol a condition to the importation of certain nuclear technologies, even if those technologies are destined for legitimate civil power applications.

Wilkinson told reporters that the G8 leaders already have endorsed initiatives to end famine in the Horn of Africa, eradicate polio by the end of 2005 and expand micro-finance programs targeting entrepreneurs. Such programs are key to poor countries' economic development, Wilkinson said.

In addition, the leaders have committed to help poor countries develop local institutions to finance access to housing and clean water, he said.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder greets students upon his arrival for the G8 summit at Hunter Army Airfield.

"Millions of people face hunger or food insecurity in places like Eritrea, Somalia, the Sudan, Kenya and Uganda," said Wilkinson. "Five million Ethiopians are unable at some time in any year to secure an adequate supply of food for their survival. The President believes that famine is a preventable tragedy, and he is determined to commit the international community and the United States to do more to help alleviate it."

Being called "Ending the Cycle of Famine in the Horn of Africa," the initiative is the first to be wholly agreed. In Ethiopia it will work by supporting land reform, rural infrastructure development, regional economic integration and integrating and making more efficient some comprehensive famine prevention programs.

President Bush and the other G8 leaders also have agreed to establish a global HIV vaccine enterprise, a consortium that would accelerate the development of an HIV vaccine, Wilkinson said.

The G8 leaders will also act to combat polio, which endemic to six countries and has re-emerged in nine additional nations. "You can expect the G8 this week to announce that they will take all necessary steps to help eradicate polio by the end of 2005," Wilkinson said.

There will be a G8 commitment to help finance housing and clean water access by developing local mortgage and municipal bond markets, he said. There will be a U.S.-African Mortgage Markets Initiative, which, as you know, was launched in 2003 and is already assisting Botswana, Nigeria, Zambia, South Africa and others in designing and implementing mortgage finance programs.

"The U.S. $1 billion Water for the Poor Initiative is working to bring clean water to some 50 million people globally," Wilkinson said.

At previous summits, on these issues reporters have had direct access to the nongovernmental organizations who have been working on these issues for many years. This year, they are not at the press center, instead they have been replaced by representatives of companies such as Verizon and Cingular.

Protest banner displayed in a Savannah park during the G8 protest on Tuesday (Photo courtesy Indymedia)

"It's a victory just to have this event," said local organizer Kelly Gasink. "If we didn't have a place for people to do their art, make their statements, they would just walk around and maybe break things, which doesn't accomplish anything."

Although the City of Savannah was more forthcoming with a permit than the City of Brunswick, the march organizers complained of barriers thrown up by all levels of government and law enforcement.

The Savannah marchers and rally speakers represented a range of views and causes, from local liberals, Greenpeace, and members of the Libertarian and Green parties.

In Brunswick, Georgia on Tuesday morning, 150 global justice activists and almost as many members of the press gathered at the old courthouse in downtown Brunswick for a "March Against the War in Iraq and the War at Home."

In San Francisco, some 200 people joined the Mutant Street Fest that was organized by a group that called itself West Coast G8 on Tuesday.