G-8 Foreign Ministers Kick off Meeting in Southwestern JapanForeign Ministers from the Group of Eight (G-8) began their two-day meeting in the southwestern Japanese city of Miyazaki Wednesday afternoon in preparation for the G-8 summit in Okinawa Prefecture later this month, the Kyodo News reported.The eight ministers are expected to issue a joint statement and a comprehensive action plan for preventing conflicts early Thursday afternoon to wrap up their discussions. The statement will also focus on disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation, U.N. reforms, fight against international organized crime and terrorism, the environment and regional security issues. The two documents will serve as a blueprint for political and security discussions at the Okinawa summit, slated for July 21-23. The statement will commit the G-8 ministers to following up on the action plan to comprehensively deal with a "full spectrum" of problems with regard to conflicts, Kyodo quoted a senior G-8 official as saying. The plan will cover states or areas vulnerable to conflict as well as those in the midst of conflict and those dealing with its aftermath. It will include five key measures: tightening controls on diamond trading to stem arms purchases in such war-torn African countries as Sierra Leone, pressing countries to stop recruiting children as soldiers, promoting measures to eradicate poverty, helping nations establish and train civilian police, and strengthening regulations on exports of small arms to strife-torn areas. The statement outlines calls for maximizing efforts to realize U.N. reforms, including an overhaul of the Security Council. It also contains commitments from Moscow and Washington to quickly implement the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( START II) and conclude START III. The foreign ministers will promise to seek an early implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons. On regional security issues, the statement underlines G-8 support for dialogue between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea in the wake of the first-ever inter- Korean summit, which was held last month in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK. The ministers are expected to spell out a special statement supporting the Mideast peace summit when they hold a joint conference Thursday after the meeting. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is absent from the meeting to focus on the U.S.-hosted Middle East peace summit which opened Tuesday. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is attending the G-8 gathering in Albright's place. The G-8 countries are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia. |
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