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President Thabo Mbeki to Depart from the AU to the G8 Summit

Pretoria, July 5, 2005

Sirte - President Thabo Mbeki, who together with Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is currently in Libya will at the end of the AU Summit today, Tuesday 5 July, depart Sirte for Gleneagles, Scotland ahead of the G8 Summit scheduled for Thursday - Friday, 7-8 July 2005.

President Mbeki, accompanied by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, will participate in two different interactions with G8 leaders. Firstly, President Mbeki will participate in the G8 + 5 Dialogue on Thursday 7 July, which will be an interaction between G8 leaders and leaders of countries of the South-namely South Africa, Brazil, China, India and Mexico including representatives from the UN, IMF, WTO and the World Bank in a discussion on global economic issues and Climate Change.

Friday 8 July will see President Mbeki join the African leadership collective, led by President Olusegun Obasanjo and leaders of Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt and Algeria, in the G8-Africa Session.

As part of preparations for the Africa-G8 Summit, President Thabo Mbeki has, in his interaction with G8 leaders and in various fora called for practical outcomes based on commonly agreed set of priorities reflected in the NEPAD programme and in the G8 Africa Action Plan.

In this regard, President Mbeki and African leaders have called on the G8 Summit:

• To formulate specific recommendations for the implementation of the G8 AAP adopted at the 2002 Kananaskis Summit;
• To agree on the implementation of specific projects aimed at addressing the priority areas of NEPAD including ICT, infrastructure and agriculture development. In this regard it will also be imperative that resources to ensure the implementation of these projects are also available;
• To reach consensus on debt relief for African countries which transcends the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative; and
• To reach consensus on the outcomes of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations with particular reference to the matter of agricultural subsidies.

A number of bilateral requests for meetings with President Mbeki have been received from several G8 leaders. President Mbeki will depart the G8 Summit for Sudan for the inauguration of the Sudanese President and his two vice Presidents.

Issued by Ronnie Mamoepa on 082 990 4853.

Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001
5 July 2005

Source: South Africa's Department of Foreign Affairs