While global problems like climate change and poverty will provide a platform for grand statements, as always, the devil will be in the details — or in his case, in a series of bilateral meetings with heads of G8 states, analysts said.
The thorny issue of the Kuril Islands, which Japan claims as its own Northern Territories, is likely to be discussed one on one with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, while a dispute surrounding the joint British-Russian venture TNK-BP will probably be discussed during Medvedev's first meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Medvedev's top economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said Thursday.
U.S. President George W. Bush, attending his last G8 Summit before leaving office in January, is under pressure from a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to address the need to open global energy markets, an idea Russia doesn't particularly like.
Medvedev, speaking in an interview with a select few media outlets from the G8 countries released Thursday, said he looked forward to his meeting with Brown but that London would have to meet Moscow halfway on a series of diplomatic and other disputes.
Dvorkovich, the Russian sherpa to the G8, said Medvedev and Brown were also likely to discuss the TNK-BP dispute, in which BP and a consortium of Russian billionaires are mired in a battle for control over the venture.
Medvedev stressed that economic ties between the two countries have never been better but added that the dispute would not be solved overnight.
