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00:00Emmanuel Macron has no doubt been watching the political developments from the G7 summit
00:04in Italy.
00:06The leaders of the world's wealthiest nations are gathering in southern Italy for their
00:09annual three-day summit hosted by Italy's hard-right Prime Minister, Giorgia Maloney.
00:14The leaders were joined this Friday by Pope Francis, who addressed concerns about artificial
00:19intelligence.
00:21After a first day dominated by Ukraine, with the announcement of providing billions in
00:25aid using income from Russian assets, the focus has turned to immigration and tension
00:31with China.
00:32For more, I'm joined on set by our international affairs editor, Ketevan Gorgiastani.
00:36Ketevan, walk us through what we've been hearing from G7 leaders when it comes to China.
00:41Well, there's definitely a hardened tone of the G7 leaders when it comes to China.
00:48And there are basically three main points on which they've hardened their tone.
00:53One, of course, is the targeting of this unfair trade practices that they accuse China
01:07of doing.
01:09They're saying that they want a level playing field when it comes to global trade.
01:14And the Americans, a senior administration official, really underscoring an unprecedented
01:21unity between G7 leaders when it comes to dealing with China, basically welcoming the
01:29fact that even European leaders are now on the same page as the Americans when it comes
01:33to dealing with China's unfair trade practices.
01:37The second aspect of that is the fact that they're calling on China to stop helping Russia's
01:43war efforts, stop selling it components for weapons, things like that.
01:48That will be, it is expected in the final statement yesterday, Joe Biden in that press
01:53conference with Vladimir Zelensky, actually going full out against China on that, saying
02:00China may not be supplying weapons, but the ability to produce those weapons and the technology
02:05available to do it.
02:06So it is, in fact, helping Russia.
02:09That was the tone there.
02:12And finally, the third aspect, which hasn't been much talked about, but is likely to be
02:17in that final statement, is the G7 leaders expressing concern about the intimidation
02:23activities of China in the South China Sea, which is, of course, very important both for
02:28the French and for the Americans when it comes to the Indo-Pacific and, of course, to the
02:33Japanese.
02:35And so when you look at this, you sort of wonder, and that was a question to one U.S.
02:40administration official on whether this was an anti-China G7 summit.
02:47And of course, the Americans dismissed that as saying that, no, it was not about harming
02:52China.
02:53It was simply about getting China to play with the same international rules as everybody
02:57else.
02:58Interesting to see how China will respond to all of that.
03:00So get to have a consensus about China in the final statement from the G7, likely.
03:04But there has been some disagreement over another topic, abortion.
03:08Tell us about that.
03:09It's pretty much the biggest point of contention, at least publicly, because it's really spilled
03:14over in broad daylight, if you will.
03:17The final draft statement is expected to drop any explicit reference to the word abortion
03:24or abortion rights.
03:25Instead, it simply reiterates a commitment to universal access to adequate, affordable
03:31and quality health services for women, including comprehensive and reproductive health and
03:36rights for all.
03:38Now, reportedly, this has been dropped because of pressure from Giorgia Meloni, the prime
03:43minister of Italy, despite pushback, especially from the French and from the Americans.
03:49For Meloni, she's simply saying we don't need to talk about abortion rights directly in
03:54that statement because it references last year's commitment in Hiroshima in 2023 that
04:00did specifically talk about safe and legal access to abortion.
04:04But she has been publicly criticized by Emmanuel Macron, who said he regretted that it was
04:09not going to be in the final statement, saying that it had different sensitivities on abortion.
04:15The U.S. also wanting that there and Giorgia Meloni saying that they're basically campaigning
04:21and that it shouldn't be about the G7 and that politics should not play a role.
04:27But she also is playing domestic politics because this is, of course, something that
04:32is important to her domestically to sort of be seen as not necessarily a pro-abortion
04:38and rather anti-abortion.