Germany's Schröder Meets With Bush At G8

Chancellor Schröder meets with President Bush in Sea Island

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President George W. Bush held a bilateral meeting in advance of the official start of the G8 summit. The summit agenda, high oil prices, the new Iraq resolution, as well as the situation in the Middle East were their main talking points.

In a statement made on Tuesday, June 8, shortly after his arrival in the United States, Chancellor Schröder said the talks in Sea Island would be centered on economic and foreign policy issues, with particular attention to ways and means of stabilizing the global economy. He indicated that preparations for a new WTO round would be discussed, noting that Germany needs a second round in order to stabilize its current export situation.

He said the G8 summit would discuss oil prices, adding that in the present situation it is impossible to talk about the global economy without addressing the high level of oil prices. He indicated that there is a need to encourage the oil-producing countries to expand production beyond the levels set recently by OPEC, to the extent that this is possible. He noted that there is also a need for more transparency in the oil markets, given that much of what is paid for oil has little to do with the oil-producing countries. He called for greater openness in revealing the speculation that is responsible for this.

Schröder indicated that Iraq would be high on the agenda of foreign policy issues discussed in Sea Island. He said he was looking forward to the adoption of a new Iraq resolution by the UN Security Council in New York, adding that the Middle East needs stability and democracy and that these factors need to emerge from the region itself.

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