Protesters engaged in rolling clashes with police outside the meeting of top industrialized nations Saturday while President Bush, facing a united challenge from other leaders, defended his opposition to climate-change and other global pacts, including his latest decision: to reject an agreement on enforcing a germ warfare treaty.
On the streets of this elegantly faded port city nestled between the seaand mountains, a second day of violent protests spread to residential areas. Demonstrators trashed banks, burned and overturned cars, set office buildings on fire, pelted police with rocks and turned a wide swath of Genoa into a war zone.
A day after one protester was killed by police, what was supposed to be a peaceful march of 100,000 became a cascading riot. More than 225 people, including 73 police, were injured Saturday.
Inside the designated “Red Zone,” barricaded behind 15-foot-high fences and 15,000 heavily armed soldiers and police, the G-8 leaders issued a statement saying they “condemn firmly and absolutely the violence overflowing into anarchy” that they said was caused by a “small minority” of protesters.
At the Group of Eight meeting, French President Jacques Chirac pressed other leaders to release a statement Sunday expressing support for the Kyoto Protocol, an international global-warming treaty that Bush has rejected. Most of the group appeared ready to support ratification of the treaty even without the United States.
As Bush’s position appeared increasingly isolated, White House officials offered a statement that says in essence that the nations “agreed to disagree” on the approach toward curbing greenhouse gases.
“It still seemed Europe was thinking one way and the United States another,” Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero remarked at midpoint in the meeting of the world’s seven wealthiest nations, plus Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was to meet with Bush on Sunday, raised another contentious issue. He told reporters that he still does not understand why Bush wants to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build a missile defense system. Bush has described the landmark agreement as a Cold War “relic” that impedes U.S. efforts to create a defense against missile attacks from hostile nations.
“If the Americans are unhappy . . . they should specify what exactly is not to their liking,” said Putin. “We have not yet received a concrete answer to our question.”
At the same time, U.S. envoys spread word Saturday that Washington opposes the draft agreement on monitoring and enforcing the 26-year-old Biological Weapons Convention. Though negotiations were nearing an end after six years of talks, the Bush administration objects to the draft language over concerns that it would subject U.S. pharmaceutical secrets to international scrutiny yet have little impact on preventing the spread of biological weapons.
Wary of providing critics with another reason to suspect Bush has an aversion toward international defense and arms-control agreements, the administration planned to wait until Bush had left Europe before announcing the decision at a meeting of the negotiating group Wednesday in Switzerland.
Mary Ellen Countryman, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, responded to reports Saturday in the Tribune and The Washington Post, confirming that administration officials met recently about the draft language and “agreed more work needs to be done to examine and to strengthen the [Biological Weapons Convention].”
She acknowledged the administration’s concerns.
“We have stated publicly and privately to our allies that we have serious problems with the BWC draft protocol,” she said. But Countryman insisted that “the United States has an unparalleled record of support for biological weapons convention and non-proliferation treaties.”
Global warming standoff
The most pressing issue of the summit Saturday, however, remained the dispute over global warming.
A senior administration official said that although the issue had been addressed in general meetings, it was not raised in the one-on-one meeting Bush held with Chirac on Saturday, nor was it mentioned in a meeting Bush had with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, another vocal supporter of the Kyoto accord.
Bush acknowledged disagreement with Schroeder over the Kyoto agreement on reducing global warming.
“I can’t be any more sincere than I have been in saying that we need to reduce greenhouse gases and we’ll work on a plan to do so,” Bush said. “But I’ve also been very open with the chancellor . . . that the methodology in the Kyoto accord is something that would harm our nation’s economy.”
Despite the additional debate over the environment and the Kyoto treaty, foreign diplomats indicated after the sessions that there was no narrowing of differences separating the European leaders, who support Kyoto, and Bush.
“The Europeans repeated their stand in favor of ratification [of Kyoto]. The United States reiterated its inability to ratify at this point,” said Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission.
So, unable to bridge their differences on the larger issue, the group agreed on trade expansion and assistance to developing countries.
For the second day, officials also addressed the AIDS pandemic in Africa, and the United States pledged an additional $100 million to a United Nations fund that will underwrite prevention and care programs on that continent. That brings America’s total contribution to the $1 billion-plus fund to $300million in 2001.
The leaders reiterated their plan to forgive much of the debt held by some of the world’s poorest nations. But there was no action Saturday on Bush’s proposal to convert half of all the money lent by international development banks to grants rather than loans.
Some European nations oppose Bush’s proposal because they believe international development funds should be self-sustaining and because the heavily subsidized loans already offer extremely generous terms. There also is some dispute over whether some of these developing nations are in fact unable to pay.
To underscore their determination not to bow to the violence that has become a common part of international meetings dealing with trade and globalization, the G-8 leaders announced that the World Trade Organization would hold another round of talks in November.
That WTO meeting will be held in Qatar, a desert kingdom in the Middle East whose remote location and tight legal controls could make access to the meetings more difficult for protesters than it was in Seattle, Montreal, Nice or Genoa.
While the national leaders met in a 13th-Century palace guarded by a small army, they expressed their “sorrow and regret” for the death of a 23-year-old protester Friday.
Carlo Giuliani was killed by a gunshot to the head. He was identified Saturday as the son of a prominent Italian trade union activist, Giuliano Giuliani.
Italian authorities confirmed that Carlo Giuliani was shot at point-blank range by a 20-year-old auxiliary officer, who was not identified, after he and several other protesters attacked a police vehicle with rocks and clubs.
Moments before he was shot dead, a news photograph showed one attacker ramming a long wood stake through the police vehicle’s side window while Giuliani, who was wearing a mask, approached the shattered rear window with a large orange canister, which turned out to be a fire extinguisher.
The officer who shot Giuliani later told authorities that he twice warned the young man to back away from the vehicle before shooting.
By Saturday morning, the spot where Giuliani fell had been turned into a shrine by fellow protesters. They covered the blood-stained pavement with flowers ripped from planters that had been prepared for the G-8 Summit. One protester left a crudely scrawled epitaph: “No justice, no peace.”
Saturday’s rioting spread into some of Genoa’s residential areas along the seaside corniche. City officials warned residents to stay indoors as swarms of masked rioters had cat-and-mouse encounters with police.
Hundreds arrested
Several hundred demonstrators were arrested Saturday, but only 37 were detained in jail.
The G-8 summit will conclude Sunday with the traditional release of a joint communique. Bush is to meet with Putin before departing for Rome and a meeting with Pope John Paul II.
Global summit again met by protest
Friday’s unrest in Genoa, Italy, follows a series of such protests worldwide.
1. Seattle
World Trade Organization conference, Nov. 30 – Dec. 3, 1999
Protesters: 50,000
Arrests: 600
Marches by trade unions, environmentalists and human rights groups were joined by violent factions who caused more than $2.5 million in damage to the downtown area.
2. Melbourne, Australia
Asian-Pacific summit of the World Economic Forum, Sept. 11 – 13, 2000
Protesters: 3,000
Arrests: 12
Thirty people were injured in clashes with police.
3. Prague, Czech Republic
Meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Sept. 26-27, 2000
Protesters: 10,000
Arrests: 420
Protesters threw molotov cocktails and bricks at police, who responded with tear gas.
4. Nice, France
European Union summit, Dec. 7-10, 2000
Protesters: 4,000
Arrests: 42
Dozens were injured as protesters clashed with police in front of the city conference hall.
5. Quebec City
Third American summit of the Free Trade Association of America
Protesters: 25,000
Dozens were arrested and injured during clashes with police.
6. Goteborg, Sweden
European Union summit, June 15-16, 2001
Protesters: More than 20,000
Arrests: 593
More than 60 protesters and police were injured and one person shot and critically injured when hundreds of protesters vandalized the downtown area.
Chicago Tribune
