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Russian
President Vladimir Putin arrives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on
June 17,
2013, to attend the G8 summit (AFP, Peter Muhly)
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ENNISKILLEN,
United Kingdom — The war in Syria dominated the start of the G8 summit in
Northern Ireland on Monday as Western leaders upped pressure on Russia to back
away from its support for President Bashar al-Assad.
Russia
dismissed rumoured Western moves to establish a no-fly zone over Syria to help
the rebel forces fighting Assad while host Prime Minister David Cameron pushed
for progress on a peace conference.
On a
brighter note the the European Union and the United States announced the formal
start of negotiations on the world's biggest free trade pact, in a bid to boost
growth and create jobs in the flagging global economy.
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Barack
Obama speaks during an event
in Belfast on June 17, 2013 (AFP, Jewel
Samad)
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But the
focus was on potentially spiky talks on Syria between President Vladimir Putin
and US President Barack Obama at a picturesque golf resort on the banks of
Lough Erne.
Since
Washington declared it would supply military assistance to rebels after finding
that the regime had used chemical weapons, Obama and Putin are now offering
military support to opposing sides in the war.
Cameron
wanted the summit to focus on efforts to crack down on tax evasion and force
multinational companies to be more transparent, but the bloody conflict in
Syria threatened to overshadow everything else.
The British
premier said his priority in the session dedicated to Syria later Monday was to
ensure that a peace conference on the conflict takes place later this year in
Geneva.
"What
we do need to do is bring about this peace conference and this transition, so
that people in Syria can have a government that represents them, rather than a
government that's trying to butcher them," Cameron said in a round of
television interviews.
Washington
and Moscow have been pushing for Syria's regime and the opposition to hold
peace talks in Geneva, but the efforts have so far been fruitless.
In his
talks with Putin, Obama will emphasise that Washington wants to keep alive the
proposed peace conference in Geneva, which appears to be slipping down the list
of priorities.
But on the
eve of the summit Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it clear that few
G8 leaders expected Putin to change his position.
"I
don't think we should fool ourselves. This is the G7 plus one," Harper
told reporters in Dublin.
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Police
stand next to their armoured
vehicle at a guarded junction in
Enniskillen,
Northern Ireland on
June 17, 2013 (AFP, Paul Ellis)
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"Unless
there's a big shift of position on his part, we're not going to get a common
position with him at the G8."
French
President Francois Hollande also criticised Russia for arming Syria's regime
before he met Putin.
"How
can we accept that Russia continues to deliver arms to Bashar al-Assad's regime
while the opposition receives very few and is being massacred?" Hollande
told journalists.
-- Awkward
questions over spying allegations --
The gloom
over Syria was briefly lifted by the announcement about negotiations on a
transatlantic trade pact.
"This
is a once-in-a-generation prize and we are determined to seize it,"
Cameron said, before Obama revealed that the first round of negotiations would
take place in Washington next month.
EU nations
agreed to go ahead with the talks after late-night discussions in Luxembourg on
Friday to convince France that its prized cultural industries would not be
under threat from the pact.
Officials
have said the deal could be worth more than 200 billion euros ($265 billion)
annually to the European and US economies.
Obama went
straight from landing in Belfast to give a speech to 2,000 mostly young people
in which he urged them to preserve Northern Ireland's hard-won peace.
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L-R:
Michelle Obama and daughters
Sasha and Malia, at Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland, on June 17, 2013
(AFP, Artur Widak)
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Thousands
of extra police officers have been deployed to guard the summit, in the biggest
security operation in Northern Ireland's troubled history.
Cameron is
hosting Obama, Putin, Hollande, Harper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
The British
premier faced awkward questions after documents leaked by US former spy Edward
Snowden appeared to show that Britain spied on foreign delegates at the 2009
London G20 meetings.
Among the
officials targeted were delegates from NATO ally Turkey and from fellow
Commonwealth state South Africa, according to British newspaper The Guardian.
Turkey
summoned Britain's charge d'affaires to explain allegations that London spied
on Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek's emails and phone calls.
Asked
whether he could guarantee his guests that no similar operation was in place as
they gathered at Lough Erne, Cameron would not be drawn.
"We
never comment on security or intelligence issues and I am not about to start
now," he said.
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G8 summit (AFPTV)
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