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Blair wants G8 expanded to G13

(AFP)
Updated: 2006-07-14 07:38

British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join the G8 to secure multilateral deals on trade, climate change and Iran, The Guardian newspaper said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join the G8 to secure multilateral deals on trade, climate change and Iran, The Guardian newspaper said. [AFP]

He wants the five countries to become members of a wider G13, a view he will put forward at this weekend's Saint Petersburg summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial powers, the British daily reported after an interview with Blair.

The British premier believed the first fruits of closer engagement could be a break in the logjam in the ailing Doha round of world trade talks.

Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, hosts Russia and the United States for the G8.

At the summit, Blair intended to push for a successor to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, a process he believed would be greatly helped by the inclusion of big emerging economies.

"There is no way we can deal with climate change inless we get an agreement that binds in the United States, China and India," he told The Guardian.

"We have got to get an agreement with a binding framework -- of that I am in no doubt at all.

"There is no point in thinking Congress is going to enter a commitment to change the structure of the US economy without China and India being part of the deal."

Blair said the G8 had to recognise that Iran was "a test case for multilateralism".

If the world cannot come together and agree a common line on Iran, it is damaging, Blair was quoted as saying by the newspaper

"If an issue as crucial and sensitive, but not actually of direct national interest or threatening our existence, if we cannot come together and agree a common line, then that is serious."