Friendship band

It?s a major diplomatic victory for India that Manmohan managed to persuade the G-8 outreach group to issue a rare joint statement against terrorism.

The annual meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrial countries in St Petersburg was a lot about photo-ops and atmospherics and a bit about the major problems confronting the world. Not surprisingly, it has ended with no clarity on resolving many major issues facing the world. Of course, calling for redoubled efforts to liberalise international trade talks and cheerleading the war on terrorism, as the summiteers have done, have become so routine as to sound hollow. Apart from the fact that G-8 summits have become something of an anachronism, the confabulations in St Petersburg were overshadowed by increasing violence in West Asia, and other problems like the obdurate Iranian defiance of international efforts to harness its nuclear programme. But that still didn’t warrant the way the summit failed to come up with convincing strategies for its focus subjects -- bolstering energy security, tackling infectious diseases and HIV/Aids, and combating climate change. It’s almost as if major world powers prefer to remain oblivious of these, and are in the same mode as when G-8 summits began more than 30 years ago.

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It is perhaps this very exclusivity that keeps the group’s focus unwaveringly fixed on the needs of industrial nations, rather than of developing countries. Italy, for instance, is a member, while countries like India and Brazil are not.

That said, India could rightly feel pleased about the outcome of this summit. As one of several leaders of non-member countries -- including China, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa -- who were invited, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears to have had useful discussions with G-8 leaders on the sidelines of the forum. This turned out to be a good opportunity for India to bolster its strategic relationship with old allies like Russia, as well as with emerging powers like China, as evidenced by the trilateral meetings Singh had with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Besides, it’s a major diplomatic victory for India that Singh managed to persuade the G-8 outreach group to issue a rare joint statement, pledging to join hands with New Delhi to identify and punish the “perpetrators, organisers and sponsors” of the recent terror attacks in Mumbai and Srinagar. Although no names were mentioned, the promise of international action is bound to have a sobering effect on the patrons of terror across the border in Pakistan.