3:20 P.M. EDT
MR. MACINNES: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. It's good to see you all here. We're going to have a background briefing today by a senior Administration official on G-8. You probably have seen the transcript yesterday of Mr. Hadley's press conference and the President has also addressed these issues, but we're very lucky today to have this senior official with us. He's going to make a few comments and then we'll take questions.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi, good afternoon. As my colleague just said, I'll go through for a couple minutes and give you a little bit of an overview of the President's participation in the summit and a little bit of an overview of his schedule while he's in Russia, and then we can -- and then I'm happy to answer questions. As you know, the President will travel next week to St. Petersburg to participate in the G-8 summit. These summits occur each year with a different member of the G-8 having responsibility fort hosting the event. This year the Russians occupy the presidency of the G-8 and have selected St. Petersburg as the site of their summit.
There will also be a bilateral component of the visit where the President will meet separately with President Putin and participate in some meetings on his own outside of the formal summit program.
In terms of some more particulars on the schedule itself, he'll arrive -- the President will arrive in Russia, in St. Petersburg, on the afternoon of Friday, July 14th. He'll have a -- participate in a social dinner that the President and Mrs. Putin are hosting. The next day the President will participate in some bilateral meetings with President Putin over the course of the morning and through into lunch.
That evening is when the formal -- when the summit schedule begins. There will be the traditional social dinner with spouses that will be held on Saturday evening, July 15th. This will be the beginning of the summit agenda itself, although, as tradition dictates, the first evening's dinner is purely a social event and no work is done over the course of that first evening.
The work of the summit actually begins on the next day, on Sunday, July 16th, when there will be several meetings among the G-8 leaders. The first working session will occur in the morning, followed by a meeting by the G-8 leaders with representatives from the Junior 8, or J-8 program. This is a program where each G-8 country has been asked to send eight student delegates to participate in an alternative or parallel summit that occurs at the same time as the leaders' meeting. The students are then brought in to meet with the G-8 leaders and will present the findings of their independent program.
The leaders will then have a working lunch and they'll participate in the official G-8 photograph and then that evening there will be a working dinner among the G-8 leaders.
Over the course of that first day on Sunday, that first working day of July 16th, the meetings will cover a wide range of issues, including the priority topics that the Russians have selected. These are energy security, infectious disease and education, as well as in other topics that have been identified as being of interest to the other G-8 members, including ourselves, such as trade, security, counterterrorism, nonproliferation, Africa, intellectual property rights, as well as a number of regional and global challenges.
On Monday, July 17th, the meetings continue, but this time the G-8 leaders will be participating in meetings in conjunction with leaders from other countries and international organizations that Russia has invited. These are the leaders of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, as well as the President of the Republic of Congo, who will attend on behalf of the African Union, and the President of Kazakhstan, representing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
There will also be the leaders of a number of international organizations such as the UN; the IAEA; the IEA, the International Energy Agency; the WHO, the World Health Organization; UNESCO and the World Bank.
As with the meetings on Sunday, the meetings on Monday with the outreach countries will cover topics such as security, regional issues, trade and Africa.
Once the lunch is concluded with the outreach countries, the formal summit agenda will end and the President will depart to return home.
In terms of our objectives for the summit, we look forward to it as an opportunity for leaders to discuss regional and global challenges with their counterparts. We also see the summit as an opportunity to advance our priorities in a number of areas, including the ones that the Russians have selected as their focus area.
But as we look forward to the meetings themselves, we also look forward in terms of the actual formal outcomes of the summit, which are a series of statements that are being negotiated now and will be blessed by the leaders and ultimately issued at the end of the summit, and these cover the various topics that I've already enumerated that will be the subject of discussion among the leaders.
The leaders will also talk about a number of pressing regional security challenges: Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Darfur and the rest.
And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
MR. MACINNES: I'll ask you to please identify your organization. We'll start with TASS.
QUESTION: Thank you. Andrei Sitov from TASS. Since (inaudible) I hear you are adding the World Bank to the list of organizations that will be attending. Is there a chance that the WTO will also be attending after all? Because I understand it's still under discussion.
And also, have you decided on the bilaterals for the President?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In terms of the international organizations that participate, the decision of who to invite is purely for the Russians to make. The addition of the World Bank was a later addition and that's why you're very perceptive to have picked up, but I did not mention it earlier because it's one that just has come to our attention now.
In terms of bilaterals, obviously there will be the bilateral between the President and President Putin. In terms of other bilaterals, we have nothing to report right now. If there's any change or anything to report, we'll pass that back to you as soon as we can.
QUESTION: Jonathan Rugman from ITN in London. Steve Hadley said yesterday that he expected -- we expect -- Iran to respond to the current offer by the time of the G-8. Does that mean that there is a deadline approaching? And I wondered if the talks with Margaret Beckett yesterday might have focused on that issue of when you begin to set a deadline.
And the second half of my question, given that this is unattributable, did the Administration know that the Germans in particular are going soft on the offer?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, on topics -- the regional security challenges like Iran, North Korea and the rest, I would let what the President said yesterday and what Steve Hadley said on the record stand. I'm not going to comment further on those. I'll leave it to what they've already been saying as the response.
QUESTION: Nothing at all?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, nothing beyond what you already have.
MR. MACINNES: We're going to go to New York via DVC. Go ahead, New York.
QUESTION: My name is Olaolu Akande of the Guardian of Nigeria. I have two questions. The first one is about Africa. What will the G-8 leaders be offering African leaders in terms of concrete support, you know, being the regular premises?
Number two, I see that in the news that you wrote on the bilaterals, the AU chairperson is not on the list and then for the first time the President of Nigeria is also not on the list. Can we have an insight into why this is so?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In terms of the participants, as with the international organizations, the decision of who to invite from which country is one that's the responsibility and the prerogative of the host, so the Russians make the decision in terms of who to invite to participate in conjunction -- in the summit in conjunction with the G-8 leaders. If I did not mention the African Union, then it must have been I misspoke or you may not have caught it, but the leader of the Republic of Congo, who is the chair of the African Union, has been invited and will participate. The President of South Africa has also been invited and will participate as well.
In terms of the degree to which Africa is on the agenda, you may remember from last year Africa was very much of a focus that last year's host, Prime Minister Blair, had selected as a topic of special attention and so the Africa -- the issue of Africa was a prominent part of last year's summit and ultimately resulted in the Gleneagles Africa Action Plan that was issued.
This year President Putin has included the topic of Africa for discussion both when the G-8 meet on Sunday the 16th as well as on Monday when the G-8 leaders meet with the outreach participants on the 17th. There's also work being done on a text essentially describing the progress that's been made in implementing the Gleneagles commitment since last year.
QUESTION: Thank you. Donghui Yu with The China Press. Do you have any certain schedule of President Bush meeting with President Hu Jintao in this summit? What will be the main topics of your meeting, of course, besides North Korea crisis?
And my second question is I know China is -- has (inaudible) to join G-8. And I believe really if China is willing to join G-8 the United States won't accept it right now. So my question is what requirement and criteria should China meet, such as with democracy and free new market system that China will be qualified to join G-8 and the United States will be happy to see that? Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In terms of bilaterals, as I mentioned before, right now there's only one bilateral scheduled and that's for the President obviously to meeting with the host of leader President Putin and that will occur on the 14th and 15th. In terms of whether there'll be any other bilaterals, including potentially with President Hu, that's something that we have nothing to announce on right now. And so if there's any news on any additional bilaterals we'll make sure you know.
In terms of participation in the G-8, the G-8 obviously is composed of the countries that are in at this point. Whether or not there's going to be any changes to it, I don't anticipate at this point that the leaders will be discussing any formal changes to the G-8 participation list. But China has participated in -- will participate this year and did participate last year and does -- I think did as well at the ASEAN summit. So China's leader has participated in previous G-8 summits and will do so this year.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Kaori Iida. I'm with NHK Japanese Public Television. I have a question on trade. This will probably be the last chance for the world leaders, especially with Brazil and India, to have a discussion on the WTO Doha round in (inaudible). And how active do you think the President will be in these discussions and will the United States -- does the United States have any willingness to offer any proposal for a breakthrough?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The WTO Doha negotiations will figure prominently, I would imagine, when the leaders have their discussion on trade. In terms of the President's willingness to lead, I think it's important to remember that it's been the President's leadership and the United States leadership that's gotten us this far in the negotiations. The Doha round would not have been launched but for U.S. leadership on critical points. Over the course of the last several years when the negotiations were stalled, it's typically been the President of the United States has stepped up to try to get the talks going, including most recently in October -- and September and October when the President at the UN General Assembly made a speech essentially focused primarily on his vision of elimination of all barriers, trade barriers and subsidies in global trade, which was then followed up by Ambassador Portman's offer on agriculture that was tabled in October in the WTO.
In terms of what will happen when the leaders get together, I anticipate our President will do what he's been trying to do both in his public statements as well as his interactions with other leaders, and that is to speak very forcefully about the urgency of the need to get the WTO negotiations concluded under the schedule that's been set forth. I know he looks forward to the discussions with his counterparts to try to impress upon them the importance of moving.
I think the offer that the United States put forward on October was very ambitious, calling for a 60 percent cut in what are known as amber box subsidies. These are the most sensitive and the most trade-distorting of subsidies that we have. And so at this point we're waiting for other countries to match our level of ambition and once that happens I think we can have the elements necessary for a deal.
QUESTION: Christoph von Marschall, German daily Der Tagesspiegel. Could you comment a little bit, what is the signal to the policy towards Russian democracy and NGOs? I'm a little puzzled. On one hand, there was this idea that Germany should host a special reception in Petersburg parallel to the G-8. This was backed by the U.S., as far as I understood, and now it's a disappointment that it's not going to happen because of Latin protest.
On the other hand, there is a clear signal that don't do anything -- what the host might not like, but the President as far as I know meeting with NGOs. Is that correct? Could you a little bit elaborate who is he meeting and what is now the signal? Do something about the NGOs, or rather don't do anything what Putin don't -- might like?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, as the Administration, and certainly the President himself, has been very clear in terms of the importance of democracy as a central element of its foreign policy agenda, and we've been -- as an Administration and the President himself has been very open and very frank about the issue of democracy in the Russian context.
In terms of what he intends to do while he's in Russia, he will meet with NGOs while he's there. There is an NGO event that's right now -- today and tomorrow -- at which we have sent two senior administration officials to participate. We anticipate the issues of democracy and freedom of participation and the rest to come up in the course of the discussions either during the bilateral portion or when the leaders get together.
There's no ambiguity or change in terms of where this Administration, where this President is on this topic. In fact, I think he spoke about it when Andre [ph] and others had a chance to sit down with him yesterday, I guess, in the Roosevelt Room to talk about -- to hear directly from the President in terms of his expectations for what he would do while he was in St. Petersburg.
QUESTION: Thank you. Tom Doggett with Reuters. Heading into this G-8 summit, does the U.S. believe Russia is a reliable energy supplier to the West and what reforms will the U.S. be pushing Russia to make in its energy sector, particularly allowing more foreign investment? And are you going to ask for a decision to be made -- if not at this summit, very soon -- on the Stockman gas field, who the partner will be and will you be pushing that a U.S. company be one of those partners with Gazprom?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The Russians have identified three priority topics as the focus of their summit: energy security; infectious disease and education. The energy security, in particular, has probably gotten the most attention and it's one of special interest to us because of the importance that the President has attached to that issue globally, both in terms of things that he's tried to do domestically, in terms of initiatives that he has issued here in the United States, such as the Advanced Energy Initiative, as well as the global agenda that we've been trying to pursue to try to, for example, increase the use of alternative energy technologies -- hydrogen, nuclear, and the rest. And so when the Russians have identified the topic as a priority issue for their summit, it was a real -- we viewed it as a moment of opportunity because of the fact that the energy security challenge is one that's so central to what we're looking at here in the United States, but it's also a particularly important one because of the obvious important role Russia plays as a global producer.
In terms of whether they're a reliable supplier or not, I think what the focus of the summit will be, will be to get agreement -- to have a discussion among the leaders about the topic, but also to produce the leader statement that I think we would want to make sure is reflective of our approach to energy security, which is fundamentally one that's advanced by promoting open, transparent and competitive markets in all stages of the energy distribution chain, all the way from production to transit to distribution. And I think -- I'm hopeful that what we will ultimately produce will be a statement that will at least in terms of what the leaders will issue will be a strong template for how you -- the correct way to go about addressing the issue of energy security.
QUESTION: Will that be brought up in private discussions with Bush?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It's hard to say. You know, I think those of us who have these jobs know enough not to anticipate directly what the leaders will raise. But the issues of a number of these infrastructure programs as well as Russia's decisions regarding the subsoil law and the others are things that have been a part of the ongoing bilateral agenda we've had with the Russians. So I don't know if those will specifically come up over the course of the discussions, but they're important issues on our agenda and we've raised them through other channels and at other levels and we'll continue to do so.
QUESTION: Alex Hsiumg, Voice of America, China branch. I would like to know whether there is a news briefing to be held by the Administration during the session in St. Petersburg?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I defer to my colleague who makes those decisions.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: There will briefings to the travel and press corps, but there's no formal press conference by the President in conjunction with the G-8. He'll probably have either pool coverage following the meeting with President Putin. I'm not sure. That could be a joint press conference, but it is not a press conference following the G-8.
QUESTION: How about chitchat with American medias, you know, like an informal talk between government officials and reporters?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Well, again, I'm sure that throughout the weekend in Russia in St. Petersburg, where there is time, that there will be different senior administration officials, be it Mr. Hadley or whoever else is traveling with us, I'm sure will be taken to the press filing center to talk to our traveling White House press corps. I just -- I don't have a formal schedule of that. We never have a formal schedule of that. That is -- just kind of happen on the fly.
QUESTION: There is some concern in Russia that the proposed nuclear deal between our two countries will allow for some spent nuclear fuel to be brought back into Russia from other countries for storage, reprocessing and all of that. Ecological groups object to that. To the best of your knowledge, specifically in the American -- American-Russian deal that is being prepared because it's not open (inaudible) as it's being prepared, is there anything that would allow American nuclear fuel, spent nuclear fuel, to be brought back to Russia? Because I understand now it is not allowed for such fuel -- for instance, I don't know, from South Korea. You export the fuel to South Korea and you do not allow it to be exported to third countries. Would the new deal allow for such a possibility?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, obviously, there's nothing that's been announced. I know you're alluding to a number of press reports suggesting that there's agreements that's being worked on. But until there's an announcement of any agreement, I don’t want to characterize it or tell -- you know, anticipate what will be in it or not in it.
QUESTION: Again, Tom Doggett with Reuters. Last Thursday, I think it was, there's a telephone briefing from Moscow with Igor Shuvalov.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Shuvalov.
QUESTION: Exactly. And he said that Russia hoped that on the eve of the summit, the meeting between Bush and Putin, that the differences could be worked out for Russia's entry into the WTO, the concerns the U.S. has. They hope to get it worked out then and then maybe have a protocol announced or signed during the summit. Is that the U.S. expectation that the differences could be worked out at this Friday meeting?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We've had a longstanding interest that's been well known and well articulated of getting -- helping facilitate Russia's entry into the WTO. But obviously there is a formal negotiation that's been underway for some time with issues that are well known to the Russians that ultimately need to be resolved for a final agreement to be reached.
We very much want to do what we can to get the negotiations going, and if there's a chance to get them done between now and the time that the leaders get together, we would be very open to that. But ultimately the timing and the speed at which any final deal will be reached is ultimately in the hands of the Russians, who understand well the kinds of issues that we've laid out that need to be addressed as a part of an accession package and they'll have to make the decisions about whether they're ready to help us find a final agreement that will allow us to get a deal that's commercially sound, supportive of the WTO principles that need to be upheld, but also will get the necessary support in our Congress to get the repeal of Jackson-Vanik, which is an important objective of both this Administration as well as the Russians.
QUESTION: So do you think that goal of having this worked out Friday or (inaudible) might be too optimistic on the part of the Russians at this point?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, one thing, remember the President has a trade minister whose job it is to negotiate, so on the specific -- how you characterize the issue at the outset. Our President will not negotiate a final agreement. That will be negotiated among trade officials and the trade ministers. But I don't want to -- we are hopeful that a deal -- that we will be able to get the kinds of commitments from the Russians that will allow it to get -- allow a deal to be struck sooner rather than later. In terms of whether that can happen between now and Friday, we'll have to see at this point. At this point it's really -- it's not something that I can guess about one way or the other.
QUESTION: The President will be away from this country on and off with the visit in Germany five days. That is an enormous investment when I see all the pressing problems here, so it is an enormous investment so what do you want to get out of this G-8 summit? What should happen or what would be clear on Monday that it's worth the investment? It's not just that we had some nice talks about different issues, a little bit more pressure here or a little bit more solutions there or hard solutions? What do you expect that you can say this was a successful summit?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There's a series of summits that fall on any leader's schedule when they come into office. A lot of these are events that have longstanding and of many years duration. The trick is and the challenge for any administration has been to make sure that we use these events to maximum effect, and this President has done that very much so by making sure that he goes to these summits with a very clear agenda of what he wants to get done, and in particular this President since 9/11 has been to make sure that these summits become opportunities to advance our global agenda not only on economic and prosperity issues but also in terms of using them as events to get leaders to address security and other regional challenges.
And so the President will go into the summit as a real -- I think will view the summit as an opportunity to talk to his counterparts about pressing global issues along the lines of the ones I've alluded to and I think you're referring to in your question. But there's also with this summit a very full and some would characterize as extensive formal agenda of items that will be addressed in the course of these formal statements that leaders will issue. They'll cover a range of topics. We're optimistic at this point that we will reach consensus on everything that the Russians have put on the table in terms of the formal summit process and that the summit will advance a number of important policy objectives. The specifics obviously we'll have to see when the text comes out, but the summits can be useful events and we're looking forward to using them to that -- in that way.
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, it's hard to say with these summits because you don't want to characterize what will come out of it until the leaders have actually had a chance to get together and sort of talk about the issues and then review the text that's been negotiated for them and give their final agreement to it, so it would be premature for me to say this is one achievement that will come out of the summit or another achievement will come out of the summit. But what you'll see is that this President uses the -- he tries to use the summit and directs all of us who help prepare him for these summits to make sure that we use the events to maximum effect on the wide range of issues of interest to us, from the prosperity sphere all the way to the security sphere. And I think you'll see that same approach this year. But in terms of specifics, we'll have to see after the summit.
QUESTION: Kaori Iida with NHK again. The statements -- how strong a message do you think the leaders will address with regard to North Korea? Especially I'm interested because it comes from the Japanese press.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah. Like I said, I think it was the very first question. On issues such as North Korea and Iran and others, the President spoke about them yesterday, as did Steve Hadley on the record, so I'll let their answers stand in terms of what expectations we have on those topics.
MR. MACINNES: Just one last question. Okay, we'll do two.
QUESTION: Okay, thanks. Andrei Sitov again. Have you ever tried to evaluate the effectiveness of the G-8 summits in terms of what percentage of the commitments made in those summits are actually carried out? And to give you a specific example, President Putin raised the issue in his recent internet conference where he said in Cologne a few years back -- I don't remember exactly, but a few years back in Cologne in Germany -- where G-7/G-8 committed to helping Russia with reforms (inaudible). And he said we probably don't even need the money now, but the commitment was never fulfilled. So what about that -- his question?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The commitments that the leaders make at the G-8 summit are political commitments; they're not binding treaty obligations. But they're commitments that, at least I know for us in the United States, we undertake with enormous amount of care because we do and have a very strong record of making sure that we follow through. There's an active debate about the degree to which various summits -- you see among sort of think tanks and others about the degree to which summits are important. And there's also a number of groups who actually evaluate the degree of follow-through that there's been in these summits.
What I can say for us in the United States is that we take the commitments that we make in these summits extraordinarily seriously, as the person who is primarily -- has primary responsibility for overseeing much of this process, there's an enormous degree of care that goes into any final decision that's made on any of the leaders statements before we make any agreement to sign on and that reflects the fact that we intend to follow through.
So it's right to keep a close eye on the issue of follow-through and there are probably areas where there are deficiencies. But in terms as far as we're concerned, it's something we take seriously and we have a good record of following through on.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) commitment that Putin was referring to?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'm not familiar with the specific Cologne commitments, but there are, you know, a number of commitments, including the global partnership for example, where the United States has put multi-billion dollars of investment to make sure we follow through on the Global Fund. The concept of the global fund was conceived at a G-8 summit and that's been implemented. There's a whole series of important global initiatives that have sprung, at least conceptually, from G-8 summits and it's just a matter of making sure that the summits are used effectively and that there's real follow-through.
MR. MACINNES: One last question.
QUESTION: My name Xue Jiang Li from People's Daily China. What will be the (inaudible) proposal for or the proposals of the Bush Administration on energy security? What does President Bush hope to achieve on this issue?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The President's perspectives on energy security and this Administration's perspectives on energy security are very clearly laid out in terms of what the President has said in his public statements as well as what he said in the Advanced Energy Initiative, and they reflect a number of things, including primarily the importance of diversifying the sources of the types of energy resources that our economy depends on as well as the sources of supply for those energy resources. And we have, going into the G-8 process, have pushed a very active agenda of using the markets as being the primary mechanism through which the goal of energy security can best be achieved. And that means maintaining an open, competitive and transparent market environment for production, transit and ultimately distribution of energy.
And so I think what you'll see in the statement is those concepts -- hopefully what you'll see in the statements is those concepts reflected very prominently as well as other additional factors that are of interest to us, including the importance of protecting the environment and development of alternative energy technologies and the like. So I think what you'll see, and what we're hopeful to see, is an energy statement that will be very much reflective of the kinds of things that the President has talked about and are reflected in his Advanced Energy Initiative.
MR. MACINNES: We thank our Senior Administration Official.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you.
