The Japanese Government is spending £285 million hosting next week’s Group of Eight summit, more than three times the cost of the same event in Britain, at a time when industrialised countries are threatening to renege on their aid commitments to Africa.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, pleaded with world leaders to keep the promise made at the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005 to increase annual aid for Africa to $25 billion (£12.5 billion). The issue will be debated next week by the leaders of the eight richest industrialised countries at a three-day gathering whose cost alone could save many lives on the world’s poorest continent. “£285 million would be enough to buy more than 100 million bed nets to protect the world’s poorest people from malaria, or to cover the treatment costs of 4 million HIV sufferers for one year,” said Max Lawson, a senior policy adviser for Oxfam. “When you realise that . . . rich countries have bailed out their banks to the tune of a trillion dollars, it highlights how comparatively little we are asking leaders to deliver to the developing world in order to meet the promises they have made.”

Half the budget for the summit, in the Lake Toya mountain resort on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, is being spent on a massive police operation, which will mobilise 21,000 officers from across the country, as well as coast guards and soldiers of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces.

The cost of organising the summit itself is 25.5 billion yen (£121 million). When Britain hosted the summit in Gleneagles three years ago, it spent only £12.7 million on the event itself – little more than a tenth the cost of the Japanese summit. The bill for policing the event in Scotland was £72 million compared with £142 million in Japan.

Expenditures in Hokkaido include a new five-billion yen media centre purpose-built in a ski resort car park, and nine billion yen of fibre-optic cables and telephone lines to connect it to the isolated hilltop hotel where the leaders themselves will meet. But the total bill is less than the 80 billion yen spent on Japan’s last G8 summit in the subtropical southern island of Okinawa.

The massive police operation is obvious even in Tokyo where police officers stand every hundred yards in the central and government districts. Journalists and antiglobalisation activists arriving in Japan for the summit have found themselves detained for as long as 17 hours and interrogated about their links to the violent protests that have marked previous summits.

Japanese officials justify the extravagant cost by pointing to the geographical isolation of the venue and that a large number of leaders from nonG8 countries, including the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, will also attend. But the greatest concern is security, and an incident such as the London public transport bombings that marred the Gleneagles summit in 2005.

Asked if Japanese taxpayers were getting good value for money from the summit, Tomohiko Taniguchi, of the Foreign Ministry, said: “If there is nothing of the sort that happened in London on July 7, then the answer is definitely yes.”

However lavish his spending on security and hospitality, Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese Prime Minister, appears to be having difficulty forging an agreement among his guests on African aid. Leaked drafts of the postsummit statement omit the $25 billion target for African aid by 2010 as well as deadlines for providing universal access to HIV/Aids treatment. “I would like to urge and emphasise that leaders of G8 should implement their commitment which was made at the Gleneagles summit meeting,” Mr Ban said in Tokyo yesterday.

On the agenda

Sunday Two meetings are planned before the official start of the summit: a US-Japan and a Canada-Japan bilateral meeting.

Monday The first day will focus on African development issues. A bilateral meeting between the US and Russian leaders will be followed by a working lunch with African leaders and the African Union chairman, Jakaya Kikwete. The day is to end with a working dinner for G8 leaders.

Tuesday is expected to focus on food and oil prices and climate change. NonG8 countries, (Mexico, Brazil, China, South Africa and India), hold their own meeting.

Wednesday The final day is devoted to a working session with nonG8 countries and a major economies meeting.

Source: Times archives

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