MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Split among members and street riots engulf G8 summit

The G8 summit in Germany promises to be one of the toughest on record with disagreement over how to tackle climate change and worsening relations between Russia and the West. Outside police used water cannon to try to break up anti-G8 protestors.

Even before all of the leaders had arrived, the US had flatly refused to sign up to a binding deal on slashing greenhouse gases, a key summit goal. And Russia threatened to target weapons at Europe if US plans for a missile defense shield should go ahead. Host German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have to do her best to prevent the most contentious issues from aborting the meeting particularly against a backdrop of increasingly fractious relations between some of the G8 members. Ms Merkel has set what is seen as an ambitious personal goal of persuading the leading industrialized countries to commit to cutting emissions by 50% by 2050. She also wants them to increase fuel efficiency by 20% and limit the world's temperature rise to 2C. US President George W Bush's senior climate adviser, James Connaughton, said that although there was growing consensus on the need for action on climate change the US did not believe the G8 should be the forum for setting targets. "There is significant agreement that those should be established on a national basis, and the only area of disagreement is that the G8 should dictate the national policies of its members," he said. Nonetheless, as he arrived for the summit in Heiligendamm, Mr Bush insisted that he still had a "strong desire" to work with Ms Merkel on a post-Kyoto agreement plan. Bush adopted a similarly conciliatory tone when asked about Washington's very public row with Moscow over US plans to build missile defense facilities in two former Soviet satellites, the Czech Republic and Poland. Mr Bush dismissed Mr Putin's threat of aiming its missiles at Europe, saying that "Russia is not going to attack Europe; Russia is not an enemy". "There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat". Bush also sought to play down earlier criticism of Russia's record on democracy saying: "Russian society had moved a long way since the Soviet era". Tensions are equally high outside the summit where several hundred anti-globalization protesters defied riot police and water cannon to try to reach the security fence surrounding the summit venue. Some blocked a railway track being used to shuttle officials to the site and nearby roads, cutting off all ground access to the summit for a short time. Security measures include some 16,000 officers which have been deployed to deal with what are currently estimated to be around 6,000 protesters. The police are keen to avoid the disturbances seen last weekend in the city of Rostock, where protests turned violent and some 1,000 people were injured.