Britannia Radio

This is an insider's view of what really goes on at summits - 
economic ones especially.  He should know - he was there!

It has the ring of absolute authenticity - and is quite hilarious too 
in places.

So enjoy it  - it's great to read!

xxxxxxxxxx cs
========================
TELEGRAPH   1.4.09
All in a spin at the G20 summit
The leaders gathering in London are in for an experience that ranges 
from the soul-crushing to the bizarre, says Christopher Meyer.

By Christopher Meyer

I have in my scrapbook a photograph of a slumbering British 
delegation as it listened to a speech by the then German Chancellor, 
Helmut Kohl. This was at a 1985 meeting in Bonn of the G7 group of 
nations (this week it is the G20, showing that grade inflation is as 
big a problem in international diplomacy as it is in British 
education). The photo does not, of course, capture Margaret Thatcher 
herself - who didn't like sleeping, even at night - but the senior 
officials in her delegation, plus me, a small cog in a powerful 
machine. We are all smitten, not just by Kohl's soporific rumble, but 
by the effort needed to keep awake during the tedium of an economic 
summit. There is something about "multilateral" diplomacy, as the 
professionals call it, that crushes the soul. At a vast jamboree held 
in Budapest in the Eighties a chandelier crashed on to the conference 
table. The Hungarian foreign minister leant over to Britain's 
Geoffrey - now Lord - Howe and muttered: "My God, that was a near 
thing. It might have woken someone up."

Actually, I was nearly shot dead at the Bonn summit. I happened to 
walk into the conference centre lavatories just as President Reagan 
and a posse of secret servicemen came in from the other end. The 
bodyguards eyed me with intense suspicion. Reagan had already 
survived one assassination attempt. I reached slowly and carefully 
for my fly in the knowledge that one false move could leave me bullet-
ridden in the urinal. Reagan gave me a cheery wave - as ever, 
amiability personified. I made in return a kind of crabbed hand-
gesture, accompanied by a little bow, desperate to avoid any hint I 
was grasping something more threatening than my organ.

This week, there is much excitement at the arrival in Britain of 
another US president, this time the global superstar, Barack Obama. 
There are also, ostensibly, big hopes for what might emerge from the 
meeting of the world's leaders in London's Docklands.

But the truth about diplomatic conferences is that, too often, not a 
lot happens. It is not supposed to. There is a script, which all the 
leaders are expected to follow. For senior advisers there is nothing 
more worrying than an outbreak of spontaneous discussion or, heaven 
forbid, actual negotiation between the Great Men and Women. Even at 
meal times, when you might expect the leaders to ease up a bit, 
advisers - some disguised as interpreters - are lurking either in the 
room or just outside, ready to race in to whisper the "line to take", 
should the need arise. There are exceptions to the rule. In my time 
as a diplomat, they characteristically involved Margaret Thatcher, 
when she went into battle with European leaders in defence of British 
interests. This sometimes involved meetings from which advisers were 
ejected, so that the real political bargaining could begin. John 
Kerr, Britain's then ambassador in Brussels, got round this by hiding 
under the conference table from where he whispered advice to Thatcher.

But for the most part, international leaders are expected to turn up 
and bless the communiqué. This will have been negotiated weeks, even 
months, beforehand by officials - the so-called Sherpas. If the 
process has gone well, there will be nothing in the documents for the 
leaders to resolve. Occasionally, passages will be in square 
brackets, denoting where it has not been possible to reach agreement. 
It will then be up to the leaders to sort things out. This, in my 
experience, tends to irritate them. They don't like doing detail. The 
late President Mitterrand of France seemed to make it a point of 
honour to have only the vaguest acquaintance with the agenda, just as 
he always contrived to arrive last at summit sessions, especially if 
the American president were in attendance.

With, so we are told, only about a quarter-of-an-hour's speaking time 
at the Docklands summit for each of the 20 or so delegations, the 
scope for serious debate will be almost non-existent. Most of the 
leaders will instead take the opportunity to make grandstanding 
speeches to seize the headlines back home. Some may sneak out of the 
meeting to take personal charge of briefing the press. The more 
brazen will flounce out theatrically in what they hope will be seen 
at home as muscular diplomacy. Reports from France suggest that 
President Sarkozy is already threatening this time-honoured 
manoeuvre. I heard over the weekend from French sources that he had 
put in an early bid for one of the press briefing rooms.

For spin will be king of the Docklands summit. It used to be a 
convention at these affairs that nobody held a press conference until 
the chairman - in this case, Gordon Brown - had finished his. How 
many, I wonder, will jump the gun? There may be other dirty tricks. A 
draft of the communiqué has already been leaked in Germany, to 
Britain's discomfort. The Germans have form: they once took a British 
paper given to them in confidence and launched it publicly as a 
Franco-German initiative at a European summit.

Make no mistake about two things. First, Barack Obama will be the 
star of the show. He may not be walking on water any more; but, 
unlike any US president in my lifetime, he is probably the most 
popular politician on the planet. Even today, there is something 
about the American President walking into the conference room, which 
no other leader - even the French President, especially when he is 
very small - can rival. It has something to do with the almost 
tangible projection of power. Second, the only encounter that will 
really matter for the future of the world will be outside the 
conference hall. It will be that between Obama and the Chinese 
president Hu Jintao - leaders, respectively, of a mature and of a 
rising superpower. The profound economic interdependence of the US 
and China will be the Special Relationship of the 21st century.

There is always a tension at these meetings between internationalist 
aspiration and domestic politics. In dire economic times, the tension 
becomes almost unbearable. You can have all the solemn declarations 
in the world against protectionism; but if a government's survival 
depends on protecting jobs at home, there are no prizes for guessing 
which argument is going to prevail. That applies almost as much to 
dictatorships as to democracies. The one thing that this motley 
collection of presidents and prime ministers has in common is acute 
vulnerability to how they are seen back home to be helping their 
country weather the economic tempest.

So, there will be an awful lot of flatulent aspiration in the 
communiqué. It will bind no one. The drafters' ingenuity will be 
tested to the limit in the search for words to paste over the 
differences between the two sides of the Atlantic on fiscal stimulus 
and tougher regulation. There will be some nuggets. The betting seems 
to be on beefing up the IMF's capital, doing something to ease export 
credit, and whacking tax havens: useful, maybe, but a universe short 
of a "global new deal" and something that could have been achieved 
without the vast expense of the summit. I pray for some as yet unseen 
rabbit to emerge from the Docklands hat. Otherwise, we are left to 
weep for the once proud reputation of British diplomacy, after the 
return of our Prime Minister from a world tour of serial ambushes and 
crushed expectations.
----------------------

Sir Christopher Meyer was British Ambassador in Washington between 
1997 and 2003