G8 Summit begins today in St. Petersburg

The leaders of G8 member countries meet on Saturday, July 15 in St. Petersburg at the ordinary summit which is chaired by the Russian Federation. The leaders of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada will arrive during the day, while the Russian president Vladimir Putin and the president of USA – George Bush are already in the city, where they already had a round of bilateral negotiations. The main activities are planned for July 16-17, but today the leaders of those 8 countries will have an informal meeting. It is planned to adopt a big package of documents on summit’s issues as a result of those 8 leaders’ meeting – energetic security, collaboration in the field of education an fighting communicable diseases etc. The G8 leaders could make declarations related to the most serious problems concerning foreign affairs policies. Previously, at a press conference, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Andrei Stratan declared that the issue of frozen conflicts of the former USSR countries will be discussed at the summit. Within a visit to Chisinau on July 13-14, Eneko Landaburu, Director General for Foreign Affairs of the European Commission declared that this issue is not planned to be discussed at the summit.