G-8 Reaches Africa, Climate Deals

World leaders wrapped up an economic summit shaken by terrorism, agreeing Friday on an "alternative to the hatred" — aid packages for the Palestinian Authority and Africa and a pledge to address global climate change.

One by one, the leaders of the G-8 signed their summit communiqué, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring that the bombings in London "will not obscure what we came here to achieve."

"We are convinced the politics that we represent will win and will triumph over terrorism," said Blair, the summit host, to close the three-day gathering.

"It isn't all that everyone wanted but it is progress – real, achievable progress," he said.

With a last-minute pledge from Japan, Blair won a key victory, announcing that aid to Africa would rise from the current $25 billion annually to $50 billion by 2010.

In a separate joint statement on terrorism, the leaders pledged "to new joint efforts" to combat terrorism in light of the London bombings. Among those commitments was cooperating in ways to improve the safety of rail and subway travel.

"Compared to previous G-8 meetings, the Scotland summit was a success because pledges of Africa aid, debt-cancellation and billions of dollars for the Palestinian Authority far exceeded expectations," said CBS Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk.

Blair lost his push to get all summit countries to commit to boosting foreign aid to an amount equal to 0.7 percent of national income by 2015. Instead, a summit document said the European Union had agreed to that support but did not mention the United States.

President Bush had refused to be bound by the 0.7 percent target. The United States is currently giving 0.16 percent of national income, the smallest percentage of any of the G-8 countries.

Blair ticked off a list of accomplishments from a meeting that nonetheless produced less than he had hoped going in. The major failure was in the area of global warming, where staunch opposition from President Bush thwarted Blair's efforts to get a U.S. commitment to firm targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere.

Aside from the massive increase in aid for the African continent, leaders signaled support for new deals on trade, endorsed cancellation of the debt of 18 of the world's poorest nations, pledged universal access to AIDS treatment, renewed their commitment to a peacekeeping force in Africa and heard African leaders promise to move toward democracies that follow the rule of law, he said.

"All of this does not change the world tomorrow — it is a beginning, not an end," Blair said, with leaders of the G-8 and five African nations standing behind him. "And none of it today will match the same ghastly impact as the cruelty of terror. But it has a pride and a hope and humanity at its heart that can lift the shadow of terrorism and light the way to a better future."

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo thanked the leaders for focusing on Africa and for "their resolve not to be diverted by these terrorist acts." Blair said the Palestinian aid package would total up to $3 billion "in the years to come." The British leader said the assistance was designed "so that two states, Israel and Palestine, two peoples and two religions can live side by side in peace."

Describing the agreement on climate change, Blair said merely that the plan of action "will initiate a new dialogue" between the summit countries and leaders from developing economies who also met with them.

The leaders, struggling to keep to their mission in the aftermath of deadly bombings that rocked London's rush hour on Thursday, shortened the final day of their summit to allow Blair to rush back to lead a government panel dealing with the blasts.

On Thursday, Blair had left the summit for several hours to confer with officials at Scotland Yard and calm a nation shocked by the worst attacks on the capital since World War II. Though he later returned, business did not proceed as planned.

Mr. Bush left Gleneagles earlier than scheduled Friday. Upon arriving in Washington, the president was going straight to the British Embassy to sign a condolence book on behalf of the American people.

Also reflecting the London attacks, the series of summit communiqués were to include a beefed-up section on terrorism. Aides to the leaders worked late into the night on this document, which was described as a progress report on what their countries are doing in the global war on terrorism.

Within hours of the London bombings, Mr. Bush and the other leaders issued a special joint statement that condemned "these barbaric acts."

"We are united in our resolve to confront and defeat this terrorism that is not an attack on one nation, but on all nations and on civilized people everywhere," the leaders said.

In his closing statement Friday, Blair said: "There is no hope in terrorism, nor any future in it worth living. And it is hope that is the alternative to this hatred, so we offer today this contrast with the politics of terror."

Despite the leaders' expressions of anti-terror solidarity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hinted Western countries were being hypocritical because they do not call Chechen rebels international terrorists.

Russian has objected vehemently to Britain's granting asylum to a top Chechen rebel representative, Akhmed Zakayev, and the United States giving refuge to another, Ilyas Akahmatov.

"It is highly dangerous and misleading to think that those who support and encourage terrorism can be called political figures," Lavrov said in Moscow.

On climate change, the United States, the only G-8 country that has not ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, was successful in rejecting Blair's call for setting specific targets and a timetable for reducing greenhouse emissions, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.

The communique was to acknowledge the split between the United States and the other countries in a section that said "those of us who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, welcome its entry into force and will work to make it a success." That was the document's only mention of the treaty put into effect this February. Mr. Bush contends the Kyoto accord's curbs on greenhouse emissions would wreck the U.S. economy.

Still, supporters of more aggressive action said that the United States had agreed to a document that stated "while uncertainty remains in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now." French President Jacques Chirac called that compromise language a "visible, real evolution" in the American position.