Group of Eight leaders to focus on fighting terrorism

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and other leaders of the world's most powerful countries are determined to use this year's Group of Eight summit to launch what some are calling a Marshall Plan for Africa: billions of dollars in new aid to the poorest continent.

African assistance is expected to be the primary achievement of the 28th annual economic summit, which gets under way Wednesday at a remote resort in the Canadian Rockies. Bush and the leaders of the other G-8 countries -- Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada -- also will spend considerable time at their first summit meeting since Sept. 11 reviewing the fight against international terror.

U.S. allies are coming with plenty of questions about what Bush might have in mind in terms of expanding the war to Iraq and other countries. The president, in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy on June 1, said the United States will strike pre-emptively against suspected terrorists or the states that support them if necessary to deter attacks on Americans.

The remarks raised new misgivings about what many U.S. allies see as a troubling U.S. tendency toward unilateral action.

"In the context of terrorism, the allies will make an effort to get the president to commit to greater consultation. The West Point speech heightened their anxiety," said James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said he was not expecting Bush to apply any pressure to get backing from the other leaders for an imminent expansion of the campaign. "Demands are not on the agenda in Canada," Schroeder said in a pre-summit interview.

Protest preparation

Even before Sept. 11 elevated terror to the top of the summit's agenda, violent street protests at last year's summit in Genoa, Italy, had convinced Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien that a drastic overhaul in the annual meetings was needed.

He switched the location from a bustling city easily accessible to anti-globalization protesters to the tiniest site ever to serve as host for a G-8 summit -- Kananaskis, Alberta, a remote village accessible by a single two-lane road.