Guest list for G7 summit tells of global challenges

KANANASKIS, Canada: The G7 may be a small, elite club, but when its leaders gather in Canada, several other national heads will attend as guests -- highlighting the group´s efforts to adapt to a fast-changing world.

The leaders of India, Ukraine, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea are among a carefully selected guest list drawn up at a time of global turmoil and a radical new US approach to world affairs.

Summit invitations have become part of the G7 routine, and the host nation often likes to make a “welcome-to-this-exclusive-club” gesture, Ananya Kumar, of the Atlantic Council´s GeoEconomics Center, told AFP. “The leaders want to meet each other, and you´ll see the guests being a part of most of the work that happens.”

Some hosts “really want certain guests there to show their significance in the global economy,” she added. This year´s summit in the Canadian Rockies comes as the G7´s share of world GDP has fallen from 63 percent in 1992 to 44 percent today, and as member nations deliberate on troubled relations with China and Russia.

“It´s important to think of who will be there in the room as they´re making these decisions,” Kumar said ahead of the three-day event that mixes leadership meetings with “the nitty-gritty ministerial work.”

Fifty years ago, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States formed the G6, first meeting at a French chateau, before Canada joined the following year.

Russia itself was a guest in the early 1990s, becoming a full member of the G8 in 1998 before being expelled in 2014.