Things are moving
Thursday 2 April 2009
It’s 3pm and you get the feeling things are starting to happen. There’s more scuttling around by officials, journalists and others. The nearest comparison to this experience I can make is being a (prospective) dad on the day of labour – hours of waiting with not much happening, and then a growing sense of momentum and then … actually no, that’s a rubbish analogy.
How’s it looking? Not clear how strong the communique will be on the need for leaders to keep their promises on aid – it will be really bad news if there’s any hint of backtracking there. Still apparently some unresolved areas – will they agree to sell some IMF gold and use it (or at least some of it) to help poorer countries recover? Will they be decisive in clamping down on tax havens – one of the promises most heavily trailed ahead of this summit?
Just got a hug from Bob Geldof. He said to me: “Adrian! SDRs, man!” I said: “I know!” (I do. Honest.)
The biggest rock star here though is clearly Obama. I’m told he’s taking twice as long as he should to get from one meeting to the next because people want to have their photo taken with him in the corridors and are ignoring all protocol in order to get it. I wonder how long this will last. As for the rest… Apparently Nicolas Sarkozy is given to grand gestures with his arms, Angela Merkel has been pretty quiet, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi has been very active in the discussions…
In theory Gordon Brown will do a press briefing in a few minutes, so things should be clearer soon…
Tags: G20, G20Summit, G20Voice
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