AFP :
Joe Biden makes his presidential debut at the G7 on Friday as America’s partners re-focus their collective heft on pandemic recovery and climate change after the psychodramas of the Trump era.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this year’s chair of the club of wealthy nations, will convene the virtual talks at 1400 GMT, vowing to free up any surplus coronavirus vaccines for poorer countries at a future date.
White House officials said Biden would pledge $4 billion in US aid to the UN’s Covax program to buy vaccines for global distribution. The European Union plans to double its own Covax funding to one billion euros, an EU source said.
But French President Emmanuel Macron demanded richer nations go further by transferring 3-5% of their existing stock to Africa.
“It’s an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it’s politically unsustainable too because it’s paving the way for a war of influence over vaccines,” he told the Financial Times, as Russia and China step up free or low-cost distribution of their own jabs.
British junior foreign minister James Cleverly said the government’s “first duty is to protect our own people.”
“But we are also a global force for good and that’s why we are leading the world in calls to ensure that the poorest countries in the world are also made safe,” he told BBC radio.
“And we are not going to use vaccine distribution as some kind of-as some countries are doing-some short-term diplomatic leverage.”
Following the summit, Biden, Johnson, and EU leaders in the G7 will join another gathering online, the annual Munich Security Conference, to discuss “renewing transatlantic cooperation.”
Biden will become the first US president to address the Munich meeting, underlining a decisive shift after cooperation was all but broken under his go-it-alone predecessor Donald Trump.
Since taking office last month, the Democrat has re-committed the United States to action on global warming and to the World Health Organization (WHO). Friday marked its formal re-entry to the Paris climate accord.
Biden’s participation in both the G7 and Munich meetings heralds “a broad-ranging, confident, clarion call to have the transatlantic alliance and partnership stand up together,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters.
However, Biden has maintained one Trumpian perspective-mistrust of China.
