Folk close to preparations for Italy’s G8 next week have been rolling eyes, shruggling shoulders and wringing hands for some months now about the train wreck that the summit looks likely to be: but now that L’Aquila, the venue for the shindig, has just had yet another earthquake, maybe it’s time to start biting nails as well. Still, at least the briefing pack sent to delegations has detailed instructions for what to do if disaster strikes (bet they all feel a whole lot better for that).
Security, meanwhile, is rock-solid – as two British representatives of the media discovered:
Top secret: a mobile basketball hoop specially installed for Barack Obama to enjoy during next week’s Group of Eight summit of world leaders is strictly off-limits to unauthorised personnel, the heavily armed Italian police guards warned.
Such is the chaotic state of preparations for the July 8-10 summit in a police barracks on the edge of the quake-torn city of L’Aquila that scores of reporters were kept penned for hours outside in a temporary press centre waiting for Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister and host, to speak.
Except, that is, for two frustrated correspondents of the Financial Times and The Guardian, who found an unguarded side entrance into the sprawling complex of the Ministry of Finance Police College and spent an hour mingling with workers before finally being captured at the hoop.
The FT’s Guy Dinmore reports that “digital photographs of the sensitive hoop [were] deleted” by vigilant members of the Guardia di Finanza, but the Guardian’s John Hooper showed more initiative: here’s his snap of the 5 star resort that awaits President Obama.
Nice. Incidentally, if you’re still optimistic enough about the summit to be curious about what’s actually on the agenda, Berlusconi’s modest ambitions include “the financial and economic crisis and the search for new proposals for stability and growth”; “the battle against climate change”; “the fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation”; “development in Africa and other less advanced economies”; and “regional and global security … with special attention paid to the Middle East and Afghanistan”.
