The hot air summit on Japan's remote island

SINGAPORE: The Japanese government must at least be credited with a sense of humor. Why else would it have chosen Okinawa as the site of the recently-concluded summit of the leaders of eight industrial countries?

The island, once the center of the Ryukyu kingdom before it was annexed by Japan in 1600, had extensive cultural and economic links with China and Southeast Asia. It was evidently chosen as the site of this year's Group of Eight (G8) summit to symbolize Japan's links with Asia.

But would not Tokyo or Osaka have served just as well? After all, they too are "in" Asia -- as is Japan, come to think of it. Why was it necessary, then, to flock to a remote tropical island at the southern end of Japan to emphasize Japan's role as the spokesman for Asia?

Since Okinawans, like the Ainu of Hokkaido, have often been discriminated against in Japanese history, it is a little strange that their past should now be invoked to symbolize Japan's links to Asia. Having to go beyond the main islands of Japan to convince others that Japan is linked to Asia is, if anything, an admission that those links are very weak indeed.

Not surprisingly perhaps, given that the host was more concerned with symbolism than substance. The Okinawa summit produced no new initiatives, only a great deal of hot air.

Wealthy nations have an obligation to break the "vicious cycle" of poverty and disease in poor countries, said Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. That is a praiseworthy, if not exactly original, sentiment, but how do Mori and his fellow summiteers propose to turn their fine intentions into reality?

Alas, the summit's 15-page communique -- drafted, as is usual, before the conference began -- was long on promises and short on details. G8 countries will work to curtail extreme poverty, the document said, but did not say how.

They will prevent the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; safeguard genetically-modified food; combat cross-border criminal organizations; deal with aging populations in developed countries; help poor countries reverse global warming and so on, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.

The most absurd was a proposal to bridge the so-called "digital divide" separating the world's have-nots from the haves, by hooking up the former to the World Wide Web.

It seems to have escaped the notice of G8 leaders that most of the world's poor do not even have access to electricity. Let them have cake instead? How about a few light bulbs first -- and bread too?

The leaders would have done better if they had dealt concretely with how economic development might be promoted in poor countries. They did take an important step in this direction by reaffirming their commitment to debt relief, but they made the same commitment a year ago, and so far only nine out of the 20 most-heavily-indebted countries have received some relief.

The sums involved are not great -- the US$750 million (S$1.3 billion) that Japan spent on the summit, for example, could have cleared the debts of Gambia or Equatorial Guinea -- but First World legislatures have been unwilling to vote the money, and political leaders have been reluctant to press the issue.

A similar pusillanimity was noticeable in the failure to take up an issue that occupied center stage in the last two summits, but hardly registered in this year's -- reform of the global financial architecture.

Sure, the 1997-1998 crisis has passed, the United States is still chugging along nicely, Europe has rebounded, and Asia is recovering. But is there any doubt that the global financial system needs reforming? At the very least, the leaders should have given reforms a boost.

The Straits Times /Asia News Network