L'Aquila, Italy - World leaders are set to push for action on trade, climate change and the nuclear programmes in Iran and North Korea when US President Barack Obama joins the world's top table for the first time from Wednesday to Friday in Italy. The annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialized nations (G8), held this year in the earthquake-ravaged Italian town of L'Aquila, aims to "make progress" on nuclear disarmament, according to the summit's official website.
It comes two days after Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed in Moscow to cut their nuclear arsenals by roughly one fifth and identified Iran and North Korea as key threats to the non-proliferation regime.
"President Medvedev and I agreed upon a joint threat assessment of the ballistic missile challenges of the 21st century, including from Iran and North Korea," Obama said on Tuesday.
The leaders of the G8 nations - the US, Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy - and the European Union are set to meet on Wednesday.
They are scheduled to "impart a new thrust" to stalled World Trade Organization talks, launch an "important initiative" to boost food production in poor countries, and show "leadership and commitment" on climate change, according to the summit website.
The food support initiative could come to 12 billion dollars over the next three years, the Financial Times reported Monday.
Officials hope that the Wednesday meetings will hammer out a joint stance on the key issues, so that the G8 can then push for agreement in talks on Thursday with the leaders of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa - sometimes called the G5.
In particular, they hope that the offer on agricultural support could help thaw global trade talks, which hit deadlock in July 2008 in a row between the US and India over agricultural trade.
EU diplomats said they would push for the summit to call for a conclusion of the Doha round of trade talks by the end of 2010.
Officials also hope that the meeting between the G8 and the G5 could clear some of the obstructions on the road to an international deal on fighting climate change in Copenhagen in December.
World powers are currently at odds over the extent to which each of them should cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, and the extent to which richer countries should offer funding and technology to poorer ones to help them fight climate change.
Drafts of the G8 statement call on the world's richest nations to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, reduce world emissions to 50 per cent below 1
