L’AQUILA, Italy: G8 leaders meeting in this Italian town will strongly condemn North Korea’s missile tests, though they will likely not agree a tougher stance on Iran, senior officials said on Wednesday.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, speaking on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, said there was no consensus on an accord on condemning Tehran’s crackdown on post-election protests. And he indicated it would almost certainly not back US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call for stronger sanctions against Iran. “On Iran, we will find the right wording,” said Frattini, indicating differences between the leaders after they met for a working lunch.
“The important thing is that the international community does not tolerate violence and the violation of human rights.”
But pressed by reporters who asked if the G8 would go further than condemning Iran’s crackdown, he said: “For the moment, the conditions aren’t there.”
Signs of division over Iran were evident at last month’s preparatory foreign ministers meeting in Trieste, northeastern Italy, when they eventually agreed to “deplore” but not “condemn” the bloody crackdown, amid opposition from Russia. They called on Iran to resolve its political crisis quickly with “democratic dialogue and peaceful means.”
A spokesman for Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso said that the G8 leaders’ final declaration would closely follow the wording agreed in Trieste, although it might be updated to take into account more recent events. Kazuo Kodama said Iran would be warned that “time is not unlimited” for it to respond to criticism of its nuclear program. The timing of any condemnation of Iran is delicate, given Russian support for Tehran, and US President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow this week aimed at easing tensions with Russia that flared over NATO expansion and Washington’s plans for a missile shield based in central Europe. Divergences appeared in Trieste when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that isolating Iran was the “wrong approach” and could derail efforts to win cooperation from Tehran on its nuclear program.
Meanwhile, G8 leaders agreed to bear the brunt of steep global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, saying developed countries should reduce their pollution by 80 percent by 2050, a summit declaration said.
