World leaders find common ground

June 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

TORONTO

At odds over how to strengthen the global recovery, top world leaders found common ground on foreign policy Saturday, condemning North Korea for the alleged sinking of a South Korean warship and endorsing a five-year exit timetable for Afghanistan.

In a joint statement, the leading eight industrial democracies also criticized both Iran and North Korea for continuing their nuclear march and called on both to heed existing United Nations resolutions.

The statement on the March sinking of the South Korean ship was not as strongly worded as the United States and some other countries had hoped. Russia was cited as a holdout against tougher language.

Though earlier demonstrations had been nonviolent, black-clad protesters broke off from a larger crowd Saturday, torching police cruisers and smashing windows with baseball bats and hammers. Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.

“This isn’t our Toronto, and my response is anger,” Mayor David Miller told CP24 television.

After spending Friday debating the best response to the lingering global financial crisis, the G-8 leaders — representing the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia — focused Saturday on foreign policy, where it appeared easier to find common ground.

The Group of Eight nations concluded the group’s two-day meeting at a lakeside resort about 140 miles north of Toronto with a joint statement. Leaders then immediately returned to Toronto to continue their talks in the Group of 20, a broader meeting that includes countries with fast-growing economies such as China, India and Brazil.

World leaders found themselves divided on how best to keep the world economy growing after the worst recession since the 1930s. They split between calls, mainly from the U.S., for more government stimulus to keep the world from slipping back into recession, and appeals from European countries and Japan for spending cuts and even tax hikes to avoid Greece-like near defaults.

For now, the leaders have generally cooled their rhetoric and agreed that deficits must be tamed in the long term, but different countries may use different tactics in the short term, depending on their levels of indebtedness.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters that President Barack Obama “clearly talked about the risks of debt and deficit” in the U.S.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said world leaders must work together to make sure the global recovery stays on track. Although the world economy has recovered somewhat, many challenges remain, Geithner told reporters.