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Eighth of the Eight
// Russia ranks last for implementing G8 decisions
During his Internet conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that far from all decisions of the G8 were put into practice. He cited the decision of the Cologne summit on cooperating with Russia to restructure the debt of the USSR, which was not implemented. Kommersant has learned that the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto is preparing a report on implementation of G8 decisions for the St. Petersburg summit.
The G8 has implemented 65 percent of its decisions. The decisions of the 2000 Okinawa summit were the most observed. But Russia implemented only 14 percent of them, as compared to Great Britain's 95 percent. The United States, Germany and Canada follow Britain closely. France and Japan appear in the middle and Italy was closest to Russia with 29 percent. All the member states are interested in nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism and crime, a Middle East settlement and developing renewable sources of energy. Decisions touching on those subjects are usually met in full. Economic decisions are less often followed.
The G8 Research Group tracks conformity to the letter of the summit communiqués, not actually progress in a field. Thus, Russia was rated highly for improving governance in the last year, exclusively because it ratified the UN Convention against Corruption.
Scholars from Moscow's Higher School of Economics are participating in G8 Research Group activities for the first time this year. The Russians assessed their country much high than the Canadians did, at 43 percent and were responsible for Russia's good mark for ratifying the UN treaty. The Canadian researchers originally gave Russia a rating of -14 percent. (Negative ratings are possible when a country fails to meet its obligations.) There have been other differences in opinion as well. The Gleneagles summit decided to increase funding for the Middle East peace process. But when Hamas came to power in the Palestinian Autonomy, many member states cut off funding to Palestine. Not Russia. It helped the Palestinian Autonomy in a moment of difficulty. The Canadians interpreted Russia's action as a violation of the spirit of the summit decision and rated Russia negatively for it. After the Russian researchers protested, all countries were given recorded as meeting that obligation, even though they behaved differently.
“G8 summit obligations can be divided into three main group,” Marina Larionova, deputy rector of the Higher School of Economics. “Russia tried hard to meet its obligations and in the first two groups it turned out well.” The biggest problems are connected with improving governance and liberalizing trade. Germany, the U.S., Canada, Japan and Italy have not yet ratified the UN Convention against Corruption and only Germany and Britain have implemented all decisions on trade liberalization. France and Italy fare the worst in that category. Russia rated in the middle. It did worse with aid to the world's poorest countries, which has a major in G8 obligations. Russia did, however, forgive the debts of some African nations. Russia rated poorly in improving it transportation infrastructure and health care system. One of the few international security obligations it failed to meet was peacekeeping. Russia reduced the number of its UN-mandated peacekeepers from 326 to 208 in the last year and reduced its contribution to the peacekeeping budget from $14 million to $11 million. Larionova noted that there was a psychological barrier to helping poor countries in Russia – a significant portion of the Russian population lives in poverty, and the issue does not have the political cachet that security, including energy security, does.
All the Article in Russian as of July 07, 2006
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