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The crisis in Syria is set to dominate the two-day G8 summit beginning in Northern Ireland on Monday, days after the United States announced plans to start arming the opposition.
Disagreements are expected between Russia, one of the Syrian regime’s key allies and weapons suppliers, and the other seven powers including the United States and Britain.
But after a pre-summit meeting in London on Sunday, Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted that differences could be overcome.
“Where there is common ground is that we both see a humanitarian catastrophe, we both see the dangers of extremism,” said Cameron. “If we focus on that common ground we can indeed make some progress.” The leaders of Germany, Japan, France, Italy and Japan are also to attend the summit at the luxury gold resort Lough Erne.
Britain has put what Cameron calls the “three Ts” – updating international tax rules, transparency and opening up trade – at the top of the agenda.
Of the 18.5 trillion dollars hidden in tax havens, 40 per cent of it is under the G8’s jurisdiction, according to Oxfam. That includes British overseas territories and Crown dependencies such as the Cayman Islands, Jersey, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar.
Cameron reached a pre-summit agreement with Britain’s outposts to crack down on tax evasion. Ten agreed to sign up to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s multilateral convention on mutual assistance in tax matters.
But campaigners say Britain’s measures, which include a new central register of all company ownership information available to tax authorities, will be ineffective if other G8 countries do not do likewise.
European leaders are also expected to launch negotiations for an EU-US trade deal which would create the largest free trade zone in the world. Cameron says it would add $100 billion to the global economy.
However, French insistence that the cultural sector be kept out of the deal may weaken the EU’s negotiating power and push the United States to make its own demands for exempted areas.
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