The MEF Countries’ Delegations tour L’Aquila
08/06/2009
The representatives from Australia, Republic of Korea, Denmark and Indonesia toured the sites where July’s G8 Summit is to be held today. The delegations were welcomed to the Guardia di Finanza Non-Commissioned Officers’ College in Coppito by Civil Protection Department International Relations Director Agostino Miozzo.
Australia, whose delegation was headed by Jan Fuhrman from the prime minister’s ceremonial staff, the Republic of Korea, led by Foreign Ministry Chief of Protocol Park Sung-hyun, Denmark and Indonesia, which were represented by their respective embassy Counsellors, Flemming Stender and Purnomo Ahmad Chandra, are invited to the G8 Summit in L’Aquila as members of the MEF. The Major Economies Forum, which was launched at the Heiligendamm Summit in 2007, is an enhanced dialogue arrangement among the world’s major economies setting out to facilitate negotiations on the climate under the auspices of the United Nations. The MEF comprises the G8 countries, the G5 and Australia, South Korea and Indonesia. Denmark is involved as the country hosting the upcoming United Nations conference on climate change in December.
The four delegations followed the same, tried and tested programme. After the introductory briefing, the MEF countries’ representatives made a joint tour of the college areas that are to host the G8 Summit sessions and meetings. The separate working parties then met to examine the event’s organisational and logistic aspects in detail. The delegations then toured L’Aquila’s earthquake-stricken city centre in the afternoon. They then went to the Media Village at Chieti, where the journalists for the G8 Summit in July will find accommodation.The round of preparatory visits to the Summit sites by the foreign delegations will come to an end on Tuesday, 9 June with tours by the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey.
