The South African and Mexican Delegations Visit the G8 Sites
27/02/2009
The representatives of the G8 countries and all the other countries invited to attend the Summit’s meetings on La Maddalena next July have been taking it in turns since January to conduct surveys on the island and inspect the facilities that will be home to the summit.
Mexico and South Africa are two countries that are acquiring increasing importance on the world economic scene, and it has been their turn this week. According to the latest pronouncements by the G8 leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, these two countries, along with China, India, Brazil and Egypt, will be meeting the G8 countries on the second day of the summit.
The two delegations were welcomed by members of the G8 commissioner delegate’s staff, headed by Civil Protection Department Deputy Chief Marta Di Gennaro. The Mexican delegation, which arrived on 24 February, continued its tour the following day, led by Salvador Quiroz, the Mexican president’s assistant director general of presidential visits.
The South African delegation, headed by Anthea Joubert, political adviser at the embassy in Italy, arrived in Sardinia on 25 February and returned to Rome the following day.
The inspection programme is now tried and tested. The delegations attend a meeting at the commissioner delegate’s headquarters, where they are shown the relief model of the Arsenal project, which is now close to completion. They also watch a video summarising all the work, the sites, the transport arrangements and the summit’s organisation. The second port of call is the Arsenal area, the former hospital and La Maddalena’s built-up area. The tour is followed by the technical meetings on the various organisational aspects, security and the press. The third leg takes them to Olbia, where the media centre will be set up in the harbour area to accommodate the 4,000 journalists invited from all over the world to report on the event. Last but not least, the delegations conduct scrupulous inspections of the hotels on the island’s north-eastern coast, where the delegations and the leaders’ press contingents will be staying.
The summit venue inspections continue to take place in an atmosphere of close cooperation. The Mexican and South African delegations, too, echoed earlier delegations’ satisfaction with the arrangements and praise for the arrangements.
The week of meetings at the summit sites wound up with a tour of inspection by the police force chiefs, who reviewed the security measures adopted for the summit with G8 Commissioner Delegate Guido Bertolaso. Bertolaso said at the end of the meeting that the work was going ahead according to plan, indeed slightly ahead of schedule.
