Against a growing chorus to expand the Group of Eight, President Dmitry Medvedev spoke on Friday in favor of keeping the G8 format as a useful tool for international policymaking.
Medvedev, speaking at a news conference at the end of a three-day G8 summit, also said Russia would continue with its individual bid to join the World Trade Organization, even though Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said June 9 that the country would suspend its bid and seek to join with Belarus and Kazakhstan as a customs union.
Leaders of the G8 rich nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — met alone on Wednesday in L’Aquila, Italy. On Thursday, they had sessions with six other countries, forming the so-called G14, and on the closing day they invited a number of additional states from the developing world.
The major global economies are also working together to combat the crisis as the G20.
Medvedev said he believed the formats should co-exist for the foreseeable future before being replaced one day by a single format.
“I believe that on the whole we need to choose an economical format for communication,” he said, without specifying what it should be.
His foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, was more blunt on Thursday.
“It’s too early to bury the G8. We need to continue the collective analysis,” Prikhodko told reporters. “There is a big common range of subjects that the G8 is best suited for.”
He added, however, that the G20 would take over some issues from the G8 and would likely keep them. He did not elaborate.
Medvedev said a broader format would be useful to strengthen the legal groundwork for international cooperation, to reform international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, and to rethink the “stereotypes” of the past years.
Medvedev found support from Canada and Germany for keeping the G8 format, but the United States, Italy and France argued that the G8’s days should be numbered.
U.S. President Barack Obama pointed out that big economies outside the G8 were vital for advancing on issues such as the economic crisis and global warming.
“One thing that is absolutely true is that for us to think we can somehow deal with some of these global challenges in the absence of major powers like China, India and Brazil seems to be wrongheaded,” Obama told reporters.
He appeared to signal that the G8 was marching toward extinction.
“We are in a transition period,” Obama said Friday. “The one thing I will be looking forward to are fewer summit meetings. … I think there is a possibility to streamline them and make them more effective.”
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he was strongly in favor of having the G14 assume a dominant role in international decision making.
“As far as I am concerned the G14 is the format that in the future will have the best possibility to take the most important decisions on the world economy, and not just that,” he said.
The G14 includes Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico and South Africa.
Berlusconi said he opposed a further widening of the forum and adopting the G20 format permanently. “When more than 15 people sit around a table you have a problem with discussions and debate,” he said. “There isn’t the possibility for direct contact or to interrupt, so it becomes formal and static.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy also backed the G14, which represents about 80 percent of the global economy, up from 50 percent that the G8 accounts for. “We will put the G14 in place in 2011 when France chairs the G8,” he told reporters.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country would try to create a broader forum but expressed hope that the G8 would survive.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G8 serves an important role. “There are issues for which the G8 is the appropriate body in our view,” she said.
The fact that Russia chose not to articulate its support for a larger G8 on Friday doesn’t mean that it doesn’t support such an expansion, said Boris Shmelyov, director of the Center for Comparative Political Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“It’s a process that is inevitable and necessary,” he said of the possible formal expansion. “It would strengthen Russia’s position because it has common interests with the major developing countries.”
Regarding the WTO, Medvedev outlined a different approach for Russia than what Putin announced in June.
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan may continue with their individual bids rather than seeking entry as a single customs union, Medvedev said.
He didn’t outright reject trying to join as a customs union, as Putin proposed, saying it would be “beautiful but quite a problem.”
Instead, Russia and its two customs union partners could negotiate common standards to apply in their separate bids, Medvedev said. This would be “simpler and more realistic” and would allow them to join at different times, he said.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke last week described the customs union bid as “not workable and unacceptable.”
Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina denied last week that Russia was still considering a solo bid.
“We’re joining together. That’s the decision that’s been made and that’s what we’re working toward,” she said.
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