G8 flags fly at half mast outside Gleneagles
out of respect for those who died in
yesterday's bomb attacks in London. Photograph:
Junji Kurokawa / AP
Larry Elliott reports from Gleneagles as the G8 leaders prepare to bring forward their announcements of deals on Africa and climate change. Communiques are new expected at lunchtime, to allow Tony Blair to get back to London as early as possible. Below is a transcript of Larry's audio report.
Listen to the report (mp3)
The summit timetable has been slightly brought forward because of the terrorist bombs in London. Things were due to wrap up here by mid to late afternoon. Now it's all going to be done and dusted by lunchtime when two communiques will be issued: one on climate change, one on Africa.
Then there'll be closing press conferences, first by Tony Blair, followed by the other G8 leaders.
Talks have been going on overnight to try to sort out last minute problems on both parts of the UK's agenda. Officials have been burning the midnight oil for most of the past week trying to iron out their differences. The big problems over the last couple of days have been two. The Germans have been resistant to the proposals on African development, where what Britain wants is a deal which would increase aid by about $50bn by 2010 and the Germans have been reluctant to sign up to that.
On climate change most of the rest of the G8 has been ganging up on George Bush to try to get to propose more vigorous measures to cope with the problems caused by greenhouse gases.
I think that the shape of the deal on Africa will be that the Germans will eventually sign up, but I don't think there's going to be that much more movement on climate change beyond what we already have in the bag, which was some recognition that man played a part in causing global warming, that there should be technology transfer to developing countries and there should be use of technology in order to try to limit emissions. But I don't think the Americans were prepared to give very much more ground and I'd be surprised if the final communique does go very much further.
The mood here is obviously quite sombre after the events in London; there's a sense of the G8 rallying round and trying to prove that the terrorists can't disrupt the summit and can't stop them doing their business. In a way it's actually helped to remove some of the obstacles in the way of a deal and I fully expect there to be a quite substantial deal on African development and a somewhat more limited deal on climate change at the end of the day.
