Australian PM officially welcomes world leaders to G20 summit

BRISBANE - Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott personally welcomed each G20 leader to officially open the leaders' summit in Brisbane on Saturday, telling them that the summit would be a meeting "of hope" for the world.

A parade of the world's most powerful leaders, one at a time, made their way on stage to greet the Australian PM, with each leader smiling and sharing pleasant exchanges.

The leaders included Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who surprised Abbott by embracing him in a warm show of affection.

Then followed Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

Next was South African President Jacob Zuma, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, British Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, European Council (EC) President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Junker.

Also invited on stage were Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who is the African Union chair, Myanmar President U Thein Sein, the ASEAN chair for 2014, Senegalese President Macky Sall, who represents the New Partnership for Africa's Development, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who are the 2014 host's guests.

After the formal greetings, the leaders then witnessed a series of special dance performances by Australian aborigines, who were painted in traditional patterns reflecting their local culture.

Once the leaders were seated around a large round table, Abbott told them that world expected the summit to achieve substantial goals in boosting the global economy.

"The summit must be one of hope and the aim has already been spelt out: to boost the global economy by 2 percent over the next 5 years and develop structural reform to deliver this outcome," Abbott said.

The G20 group, which accounts for 80 percent of world trade and 85 percent of global economic production, will release a final communique on Sunday at the conclusion of the summit.