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They Don't Even Know Those Numbers!
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a G8 statement yesterday that urged oil producing countries to increase production immediately in order to lower prices. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov thinks that seven members of the Eight used the agreement to attain the aid of just one country – Russia.
Yesterday began with a closed working session of the Eight at the Japanese Windsor Hotel. Kommersant has learned some of the details from that session.
First, U.S. President George W. Bush showed great activeness in pressing for a statement on Zimbabwe. He demanded economic and political sanctions one more time against the undemocratically elected president of that country Robert Mugabe. Some of the members of the Eight might have thought at first that Bush was probably joking. Why was he so worried about Zimbabwe? One of the participants even expressed his surprise out loud. “Half of the leaders of Africa were elected like Mugabe!” he said. “So are we going to impose sanctions on all of them?”
But when the president of France and prime minister of Great Britain decisively and unambiguously supported the American president, it clearly was no joke. It was apposition agreed on in advance among them. Bush intended to conciliate it with the rest of the Eight. It wasn’t a long discussion. It became obvious at some point that not all of the countries would sign that document.
Later, in the corridors, leaders of the emerging nonaligned movement, trying not to attract too much attention, talked among themselves about how the conditions of the Americans’ and Britons’ concession on mining development in Zimbabwe had changed, and wasn’t that the reason for Bush’s preternatural activity?
Then one of the participants in the discussion raised the question of expanding the Eight. Many had been expecting it for a long time, but not from him, that is, French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said something along the same lines, without any concern that it might lead to membership for the Spanish, who seem not so much worried about their own absence from the club as Italy’s presence there.
Medvedev said nothing on the subject. It had been decided in advance that there was no need to comment on that painful topic prematurely. A consensus is needed in any case and there are such powerful opponents of the idea in the Eight that is would be stupid to expose oneself without reason. There is no chance of the expansion of the G8 in the next few years. The opponents (the same United States and Great Britain) would be more likely to agree to the organization’s contraction.
No one had any questions about Medvedev’s peaceful initiative for an annual meeting of the Eight’s agriculture ministers or an annual agriculture forum.
Everyone here is interested in food prices, no less, it seems, than in oil prices. All the more so since the two are, according to some members of the Russian delegation, connected. That, at least, was the comment of Russian Foreign Ministry department head Alexander Pankin yesterday. He said that Russia, which exports grain, is not the largest player in the game but, nonetheless, it is displeased with the “speculative price hike” and “does not hold its grain back” waiting for even higher prices. Pankin holds that there is a price crisis, not a food crisis, because “there is grain” and “supply can meet demand.”
“Why did it happen?” Pankin echoes RIA Novosti correspondent Oleg Osipov. “Why the price hike? We can guess, but we don’t want to show our evidence.”
Some media claimed last night that Medvedev was so at home at the summit that he proposed to the other members of the Eight use the ruble as a world reserve currency. But, according to information obtained by Kommersant, nothing of the kind happened, thank goodness.
Medvedev told journalists today what he really said. “The situation with the weak dollar and rapidly growing euro does not suit our partners,” he explained. (It does suit him, however.) Medvedev gallantly shared the information with the other members of the Eight that “75 percent of the growth in price for food is connected with the use of a new type of fuel – biofuel.”
“It has, essentially, in a number of cases, replaced the production of agricultural products from which food is made,” he explained. Medvedev said that some of his colleagues were quite surprised by that information. “They didn’t even know those numbers!” he exclaimed.
Their own experts either decided not to upset them, or, as usual, only Russian experts had such unique numbers.” In any case, Medvedev was able to amaze his colleagues this morning and make them very interested in the sources of his information.
“We have to convert to biofuel of the second generation biofuel that does not take up arable fields,” added Medvedev, who obviously has a prescription for every situation in life, prepared by every possible expert.
After the morning working session, the members of the Eight went to plant larch trees and take pictures. First they heard the detailed story of the variety of larch, told by an elderly Japanese lady, an evergreen just like the trees. Only Bush was really paying attention to her, even balling up his face in concentration. Either he wanted to remember the information (he will have a lot more free time in six months and could tend an arboretum as easily as a flower garden), or else he was trying to make out her Japanese English.
Then the seven men and one woman were led up to the trees that were already in place in their holes. All they had to do was toss in a little earth, which was also piled up at the ready. They were given shovels, which they looked at with expressions of wonder. Berlusconi was the first to scoop his dirt into the hole. He was followed by Bush, who got himself into a somewhat delicate situation.
At his sides of him, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda were planting their trees. But Bush was standing with a full a full shovel between their trees with nothing but grass in front of him. He hadn’t been paying attention. The president of the United States looked left, looked right, and what did he do? He shoveled the dirt straight in front of himself onto the grass. He dumped the dirt off the shovel like a child tired of his sandbox.
Then political will overcame human feelings and he began to help the Japanese prime minister.
There was one professional there. Medvedev had moved some earth on his tour on his way to Japan. He planted trees in Ashgabat and Astana. They were a lot more serious about it there, and there was enough dirt to bury a body in the tree holes. Thus the event was an easy one for the Russian president, as it was intended to be.
It was not the organizers’ fault that several of the participants tried to turn the event into a parade of political ambitions. That is the only way you can explain the fact that, while Sarkozy was showing Medvedev how to use a shovel for mine clearance, the Japanese prime minister was gradually taking away the Russian’s dirt.
Then, when they posed to be photographed against the tress they had planted, each of which was exactly waist-high to its planter, one of the photographers shouted, “Just one glance at the camera!”
Then they all laughed exaggeratedly and the shot was taken.
The stunning artificiality of the ceremony could not be overcome by the naturalness of the setting.
When the eight leaders had returned, Bush suddenly began to pay attention to the second floor of the hotel. In the picture windows were girls in short skirts and white blouses. Each of them had a soapbox camera in her hands. Some even had two. They were apparently the hotel staff that was not allowed direct contact with the guests. The girls could watch them out the window, and this was their one chance to. Bush waved to the girls as he neared the entrance to the hotel then, seeing that they weren’t walking away, returned.
The sight from below of all of those twittering things stopped even Merkel dead in her tracks. Sarkozy nervously seized Berlusconi by the arm, and he showed the Frenchman how to do it. He grabbed Sarkozy by the sleeve, and when he finally looked away from the window to the Italian prime minister, Berlusconi blew the girls a slow, sensual kiss. Sarkozy smiled with embarrassment and headed for the door of the hotel, somewhat beaten down in gait. One thing was clear, though. His new marital bliss was dearer to him than a kiss, even a cocktail kiss delivered in front of the whole planet.
After their break in the fresh air, the leaders returned to work with renewed vigor. They passed several statements that only at first glance did not commit them to anything. One of them even looked like a sensation. That was the Statement of the Group of Eight on the World Economy. The most interesting part was point 12. It speaks of the concern of the members of the Eight over the growth of oil prices and the need to limit them.
It suggests market methods to influence prices. In the nearest perspective, producer countries must increase their production through their own efforts. (It was understood that only one country among the Eight is a major producer and exporter of oil.) In the middle perspective, the Eight countries will aid oil producing countries, mainly by investing in production, exploration and restoring production capacity (otherwise known as by hook or by crook). Finally, it will be necessary to develop competition on the open oil market. It says in the statement the larger the oil market is, the better for the world economy.
Of course, when OPEC tries to set the price of oil with secret decisions, the leading consumers object.
Russia was in a complex position. Membership in the G8 implies agreement on those questions. But Russia is not likely to play into their hands. What is there to say? In any case, Pankin confirmed yesterday in the first half of the day that Russia does not intend to commit itself to higher oil production “because, to begin with, we need a guarantee of transparent demand.”
Nonetheless, Medvedev signed the agreement in the second half of the day. What else was he going to do?
In the evening, the Russian president met individually with several leaders. There was one problem meeting, just like the evening before. This time, it was the Japanese prime minister. (Interestingly, immediately after the problematic British prime minister’s meeting with Medvedev yesterday, he rushed out to the English journalists to tell them what a good meeting he had had with the Russian president. But the same evening, his press secretary cleared the matter up. There was no progress in the dialog with Russia, and Gordon Brown had convinced himself of it one more time by presenting the issues between the countries to Medvedev himself.)
The Japanese, by all appearances, had high hopes for that meeting, and Fukuda did speak about the Northern Territories. He asked the traditional question and received the traditional answer. Calm and patient work is necessary, and the abandonment of extreme positions, and the creation of a favorable atmosphere for negotiations. Not what he wanted to hear.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of July 09, 2008
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