A wasted summit?

President Sarkozy of France is not a quiet politician, on the contrary he is deeply involved in his country’s politics as well as in the world’s. France holding the Presidency of the EU at the moment, it was Sarkozy who hosted this past Friday the 22nd summit in Nice, France, between Russia and the 27 European nations. Speaking after the summit, Mr Sarkozy proposed that a summit be held next June or July between Russia, the US and the EU to discuss a long-term security framework. After the US intention of building a missile interceptor site in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, Russia had threatened with the deployment of missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave near Poland. With the memory of the Cold War still present it would be in everybody’s interest if this coming summer a summit takes place, even more so as the new US president could be present.
After this summit in Nice, many of the leaders flew to the Washington G20 summit which President Bush was hosting. The general feeling is that it was not very helpful that the United States was in the midst of a presidential transition but it was felt the economical situation made the waiting any longer not possible.
Also the mood must have been a little tense, after it was known that Sarkozy had said that “the crisis was global but one knew where it had began.” Also the Americans did not appreciate that the French president would have commented that the summit was taking place in the US because they were the origin of the crisis. To this the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, replied that the excesses and the crisis could not just be attributed to one country. After all this one cannot wonder that not much was solved and many leaders probably returned home disappointed by the lack of involvement of the Americans. President Bush did the minimum he could, no even a large press conference with the world leaders present, leaders which were also expecting to meet president-elect Obama but did not. They will have to wait to the next summit which should take place in the United Kingdom and which is announced for next April. So this summit was probably a total waste of time, something that the average person could, paraphrasing Shakespeare say “Much Ado About Nothing” even though the economic situation is not a comedy.