While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will push for support on nuclear deal during his bilateral interactions with key G8 leaders, including US President George W Bush, he will seek to underline India’s independent foreign policy approach when he addresses larger global issues like international financial instability and the surge in global food and oil prices.

Singh will use the G8 forum to express India’s concerns also over the lack of intervention by international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank as oil prices continue to increase.

“There is increasing volatility and instability in the world’s financial markets and there is danger that this financial instability may spill over into the real economies and superimpose itself. Then the fact of the steep rise in the prices of petroleum products and the prices of food grains. These are major global issues that will figure in the discussions of the G8 and the interactions between the G5 and G8,” said Singh on his way to the G8 Summit at Toyako.

Recalling the oil crisis of the 1970s, Singh said international financial institutions played a far more positive role and were able to forecast the trend better. “International financial institutions have not performed well. Some people say the current oil price rise is due to demand and supply, some say it is due to speculation. The international financial institutions need to pool their wisdom.”

Singh is of the view that oil producers and consumers need to sit across and work a way of the current crisis and international institutions can play an important role here. Similarly, on food prices, he took exception to the diversion of land to biofuels. Here again, the US would be at the centre of criticism and on this India is working alongside China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to apply pressure on the G8.

... contd.