As we approach next week G8/G20 meeting which will be held in Muskoka and Toronto world leaders are getting tactically ready for back-to-back meetings with their fellow heads of states. Same situation is with U.S. President Barack Obama who choose his deputy national security adviser and Harvard University chum Michael Froman as his “Sherpa” on those meetings.
Froman’s duty will be to prepare Obama’s tactics for meetings with many leaders especially with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel in negotiations over strengthening their financial systems or as it reports Bloomberg Weekly he will tell to global leaders that they can’t count on U.S. costumers to lead world economic recovery. Mr. Froman said to Bloomberg that one of the biggest challenges on upcoming summits will be to keep the summiteers on the agenta.
“People will try and deflect attention to the other issues. One of the roles of the Sherpa is to bridge the gap between what the bureaucracy serves up and what leaders want to talk about”, said Mr. Froman.
Prediction are that main tension in Toronto will be focus on the individual response to debt crisis roiling Europe and much spread threat to infect global financial and economic markets. In this case U.S. is trying to push European colleagues not to move too fast in expected trimming of their national stimulus packages which are founded for fight against global crisis started in 2008. According to Mr. Froman there is present broad consensus among the G20 members about importance of fiscal consolidation. But Bloomberg rightly concludes that just year or so ago on London’s Summits this issue was just opposite; the intention was too figured out how to persuade each country to spend more and now is how to persuade them to spend less.
Upcoming summits will be the fourth session for Mr. Froman as Obama’s Sherpa and he is completely confident that President is going to Toronto and Muskoka in new position.
“The President goes to Toronto in a position of strength. [U.S. banks] went through transparent stress test, raised new capital, and took steps to clean up their balance sheets”, he said to the Bloomberg.
Host of summits Canada is also ready for economic and bank sector talks, empowered by strong results in last and this year, but Canada and U.S. are in a same position towards European countries and they are sending a clear message to them that ball is in European court. Only dispute between Canada and European side can be proposed global bank tax and PM Harper will have a hard fight with his colleagues on this issues, also the important issue which will rise a harsh debate will be maternal and child health in Africa which includes abortion.
From Bosnia to Canada 