Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Monday he was in favour of maintaining the current line-up in the Group of Eight (G8) summit of the world's most developed countries.
Nixing a proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to extend the G8 to include India, Brazil, China, South Africa and Mexico, Berlusconi told journalists on the sidelines of a G8 summit in northern Japan that he was ''personally convinced'' the G8 should keep its focus on the west.
''The G8 is where the west meets and reflects, and I think it's a very useful formula that should be maintained. It has the advantage of there not being an excessive number of participants, which allows for frank conversation through direct encounters,'' Berlusconi said.
The premier instead suggested a fixed appointment with the five other countries with powerful economies that would follow G8 summits.
''I agree that it's important to have a meeting once a year with these other countries,'' he said, adding that the G8 sideline meeting with the leaders of African states ''is a formula that works well''.
However, the premier said the proposal to add the five countries to the main summit had not yet been formally discussed. ''We will examine it,'' he said.
The G8 countries are Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia.
