Chirac, Bush Smile For Cameras, Iraq Row Still There

"With respect to the past, each will maintain his position. We haven’t changed our minds, and the United States hasn’t either," she added as the Group of Eight summit started in Evian, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Bush and Chirac smiled for the cameras at the start of a Group of Eight summit, but the U.S. president got a short handshake and stiff smile from his loudest critic on arrival in the town.

Chirac told a news conference after the summit that he had a "very positive" exchange with Bush, and that he had "not the slightest concern" about his planned face-to-face talks Monday with the U.S. leader.

All eyes will be on the two presidents on the one-on-one talks, the first since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a military offensive that France staunchly opposed, AFP reported.

"Since the start of the Iraqi crisis, France has explained the reasons for its position," Colonna said.

She said the French opposition to the invasion was based on a belief that international law and international organizations had to be respected.

"These are reasons of principle. We defend international law, the application of international resolutions and the authority of the (U.N.) Security Council."

For their part, the Americans are said to be in no mood to forgive what they see as the diplomatic "wrecking tactics" employed by France and another G8 member, Germany, that prevented United Nations Security Council backing for the invasion, the BBC News Online reported.

Chirac is pressing for progress to break a deadlock in global trade talks, but is likely to face U.S. pressure over European Union subsidies to French farmers and France’s resistance to letting genetically modified food into Europe, Reuters reported.

The U.S. leader will make an early exit from Evian following the bilateral meeting, traveling to the Middle East for two high-profile summits on the peace process that threatened to upstage the G8 gathering.

Colonna said that working a peaceful settlement to the Middle East peace process should not be limited to a unilateral U.S. role.

"Constructing peace needs the coordinated efforts of everyone," she said, recalling that the road map had been a joint conception.

Bush’s visit "will be a first step, there will be plenty of others,” she said, directing a veiled criticism of the U.S. unilateralism to secure an end to the Palestinian-Israeli tension.

“Getting the international community to work together on the same basis was one of the quartet’s great achievements," Colona added, referring to the committee that jointly drafted the “roadmap” to peace that envisages an end to violence with the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005.

There are also fears that differences between G-8 leaders over the invasion of Iraq – they were split down the middle, four in favor and four opposed – will overshadow the Evian summit, the CNN reported.

Clashes

In the meanwhile, anti-globalization demonstrators have clashed with police in towns and cities near the G8 summit. French and Swiss authorities are maintaining a 15-kilometre (10-mile) exclusion zone around the summit itself, to prevent protesters from getting close to the politicians and delegates.

But some demonstrators have tried to breach this cordon, as well as attempting to prevent delegates from traveling to Evian from across the border in Switzerland, The BBC News Online reported.

Some of the most violent protests erupted in the Swiss city of Lausanne. Demonstrators wearing black face masks attacked the hotel area, where some summit delegates were staying, with stones.

Police responded with tear gas to drive crowds of protesters away from the hotel area, and are currently reported to be surrounding about 1,000 protesters at a campsite on the edge of the city.

‘Useless’

Before the Evian summit got under way, the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) released the conclusions of a group of experts from members of the Group of Eight.

"The message is simple: the G8 has lost its legitimacy and thus its ability to coordinate economic policies at the global level — at the very moment when there is a real need for coordination," the report said.

"It is therefore essential that G8 member countries commit themselves to resolving their own problems before they make recommendations earmarked for non-member nations."

Citing such unresolved problems as stalled trade liberalization talks, the availability of water, poverty and the need for balanced economic growth to benefit poor countries, the IFRI study determined that only by adopting a "coordinated strategy" to respond to such challenges can the G8 hope to restore its credibility.

Earlier this week Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale University School of Management in the United States, said in a Financial Times column entitled "A useless extravaganza in Evian" that it was time to do away with G8 exercises as they are currently structured.

"These meetings are overrun by large bureaucratic staffs and have become gargantuan media extravaganzas," he wrote.

"The group also likes to deflect attention from its inability to make the tough economic decisions at home by loading the agenda with the political issues of the day."