G8 venue looking shaky after quakes

ROME - Aftershocks have rocked the Italian town of L'Aquila, where the G8 summit is due to open this week.

The tremors, which have reached 4.1 on the Richter scale, have forced the Italians to consider moving the conference, and newspapers are reporting the security concerns for leaders, including United States President Barack Obama, could cause the summit to move to Rome.

In the meantime briefing papers containing a sheet of instructions in the event of an earthquake have gone out to all eight leaders.

The logistical nightmare for delegates are further complications for what is becoming the most chaotic G8 ever. It is also another credibility blow to Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the current G8 president. His performances on both the world stage and in his private life have been subjected to derision.

Diplomatic eyebrows were raised when Berlusconi decided to move the conference from Sardinia - where work building a G8 conference centre was way over budget - to the site of April's earthquake, which left 300 dead and 53,000 people still homeless. Much was made of how leaders would stay in a "barracks" at L'Aquila, a police college, setting a suitably austere tone to discussions on climate change and economic disaster. Even the beds in which delegates slept would later be donated to the homeless.

Guido Bertolaso, the civil protection chief, said the compound could withstand an earthquake stronger than April's 5.8 magnitude.

The Italian green group Legambiente said the decision was always madness. "It's a good idea to talk about the suffering of the earthquake victims, but you don't actually have to go there to do it," said spokesman Maurizio Gubbiotti.

No matter where the summit takes place, the charity ActionAid says it needs to focus on hunger - it says US$23 billion ($35.6 billion) is needed from G8 leaders to save the 25,000 people around the world who die of hunger every day. In a report "Let them eat promises", it says the factors that have pushed the hungry above one billion will worsen unless G8 leaders increase aid to agriculture in the developing world and halt global warming.

Meredith Alexander of ActionAid said: "It's not often that eight people must take responsibility for the fate of one billion. Unless the G8 leaders commit to serious new money for food and farming, they will have to answer to the one billion people, and rising, who live with chronic hunger every day.

"Given that the world has already spent US$18 trillion propping up the global economy, we know they can afford it [the US$23 billion]. We are asking for peanuts from elephants."

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