Russian President Medvedev Reports Support At G-8 For Russian Food Initiative
Answering questions today after closed-door
discussions among the Group of Eight heads of state and
government at their summit in Japan, Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev focussed on the world financial crisis, food, and energy
security. He said that specific Russian proposals on the food
crisis, for a committee of G-8 agriculture ministers and a "grain
summit," had "met with support."
Citing the agreement reached on setting up special funds to
aid the countries worst hit by the food crisis, Medvedev said
that the entire food production system in the world has to be
reconsidered. "In that connection we made two new proposals. One
of them involves the need for the emergence of a new format
within the G-8 -- in which the agriculture ministers of the G-8
nations take part. This proposal was supported. And the holding
of a special session, like a summit on grain questions, a
so-called grain summit, where the causes of the grain price rises
would be discussed, as well as possible ways to stabilize the
situation in this area."
Medvedev attacked rampant expansion of biofuels production,
for cutting the food supply. He noted that other people tend to
blame consumption in China and India. (In his St. Petersburg
Forum speech in June, Medvedev hit financial speculation as
driving food prices up.) According to the Russian business daily
{Vzglyad} of July 9, while Medvedev was speaking in Japan,
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said at a press conference
back home, that Russia intends to increase grain production by
150% in the next 5-7 years.
The G-8 Global Food Security statement does instruct the
member countries' ministers of agriculture to hold "a meeting to
contribute to developing sound proposals on global food
security."
As on several recent occasions, Medvedev said that "the
existing architecture of economic relations among the main
participants is inadequate," and the current crisis shows that
"it is necessary to think about what the international financial
system ought to look like in the years ahead. ... We ought to
think, first and foremost, about what the architecture of
international economic relations will look like, since what
exists today suits practically nobody." Medvedev again attacked
"national egoism" in economics, and called for a system using
several reserve currencies, of which the ruble could be one.
On energy security, Medvedev called for "new international
solutions," and new agreements, because existing ones like the
EU's Energy Charter -- which Russia has refused to sign -- are
either ineffective, or counterproductive.
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