London Terror Derails G8 Talks

by Sanjay Suri

(IPS) GLENEAGLES, Scotland -- Four bomb blasts in London Thursday morning killed dozens and injured hundreds of people, and brought the city's public transport system to a halt. These terrorist attacks also derailed a long and sustained campaign to get Group of Eight leaders to deliver on the environment and on poverty.

"These attacks have distracted from the core of the G8 at a crucial moment," John Samuel, international director of ActionAid, told IPS. "Six months of efforts in 70 countries have been undermined by this terrible act. It is not only an attack on humanity, but an affront to the whole issue of poverty and citizens movements."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush, who seemed headed for a confrontation, have both been "let off the hook," he said.

A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe" has claimed responsibility for the explosions.

Environmentalists said they had managed in recent weeks to exert unprecedented pressure over recent weeks on leaders of the Group of Eight most powerful industrialized countries: United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and host Britain.

"This G8 summit had been developing a real head of steam on issues that rarely get the attention they deserve," Tony Juniper from Friends of the Earth International told IPS. "These inhuman attacks in London have changed the world focus."

On Thursday morning itself, Bush and Blair already had been "spinning their different views furiously," but then came the bomb blasts, and that tragedy "overshadows everything," Juniper said.

The four bomb explosions halted the campaign on Africa and the environment as they did the London Underground. Except that it may prove easier to get the trains than their campaign back on track.

The tragic disruption was particularly damaging because no draft communique had been agreed ahead of the summit. The critical negotiations were due to take place over Thursday and Friday between the leaders after the ministers sent prior to the summit failed to reach agreement.

The lack of agreement was dramatically revealed by rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono at the end of day one of the July 6-8 summit, after the two musicians-cum-activists engaged in talks with some of the G8 leaders.

The rock stars appeared at a press conference Wednesday to discuss their meetings with Bush, Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. "We've had some very tough meetings here today," Bono said. "There is a risk that we may have no deal at the summit."

But all of Thursday Blair was away in London to meet the injured and to review security arrangements. Blair's presence at the G8 talks was expected to be crucial, not just because he was the host, but because he is the strongest of the G8 leaders pushing the campaign on measures to contain climate change, and of the Make Poverty History group.

The blasts mean that the summit runs the risk of producing a safe but toothless agreement.

While the agenda on climate change and Africa was not altogether abandoned, the focus had shifted to Bush's war on terror. "The war on terror goes on," said the U.S. president immediately after receiving news of the blasts. "We will not yield to terrorism. We will bring them to justice."

And as with the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, and the Madrid bombings on Mar. 11 last year, attention turned to Islamic terrorism. These were the first attacks in Britain where an Islamist groups with apparent links to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Blair dealt with the matter of Islamic terrorism head-on: "We know these people act in the name of Islam," he said in a national address. "But we know that the vast majority of Muslims in this country and elsewhere are every bit as law-abiding as the rest of us."

When terrorists "seek to change our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed... our values will outlast theirs," he said.

Blair was clearly trying to quash any possibility of a backlash against Muslims in Britain over what he called the "barbaric" attacks. British Muslims suffered assaults in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The bombings in London now could make Muslims particularly vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination.

Beyond the direct casualties from the bomb blasts, it seems the ones next in line as victims of the attacks would be British Muslims.

The concern Thursday about the dead, the injured and their families extended to the possible fallout for other innocent people. Very few people were thinking any more about climate change or Africa.