G-8 summit falls far short of great, but it wasn't awful

The G-8 summit on Sea Island, Georgia, was knocked off the news pages by events surrounding the death of President Reagan. At the summit's end, there wasn't much to report anyway.
The president had hoped to build on the momentum of his success on the eve of the summit in winning a U.N. resolution recognizing the interim government of Iraq and opening the way for other countries to send troops.
But his proposal that NATO to commit troops and money to Iraq was rejected so firmly and quickly by France and Germany that he dropped the subject.
The president also failed to get the other developed nations to go along with a reduction in Iraq's $120 billion world debt. France argued that Iraq has the potential to be a wealthy, oil-producing state and to forgive its debts would be unfair to dozens of less developed, just as heavily indebted, nations.
It remains clear that the United States, Great Britain, Italy and Japan will have to shoulder the burden of rebuilding Iraq, with the United States continuing to carry the lion's share of the costs.
Endorsement of peace
President Bush did get an endorsement of his Middle East initiative, but it is easy enough to endorse democratic reforms in principle; the details, yet to come, could be the deal-breakers. And two of the countries the initiative is clearly aimed at -- Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- declined to attend.
There was agreement on some less contentious issues -- training peacekeepers, foreign aid, developing an AIDS vaccine -- but these agreements are typically worked out in advance by aides who do the summit planning.
The summit, which brought together the leaders of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Great Britain, may still provide the administration with some practical and political advantages. The president spent a lot of time in intimate meetings with the leaders, who emerged praising the president and his advisers for being less unilateral, more open to discussion.
That holds promise in the longer run for the United States to persuade other nations to take a more active role in democratizing the Middle East and in fighting global terrorism.
In the short run, it takes some of the sting out of accusations by his presumed Democratic opponent, John Kerry, that the president has alienated the traditional allies of the United States.