Merkel names greatest threats to global community

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has named the major threats that the global community is facing in her article special to Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper published ahead of the G7 summit due on June 7-8 in Castle Elmau in the Bavarian Alps.

“Who would have believed it possible, 25 years on from the end of the Cold War, that the European peace order would be cast into doubt by the annexation of the Crimea? Or that the spread of the Ebola virus might destabilize several African states and set their development back? Or that in the Middle East an Islamist terrorist organization would be trying to establish a so-called caliphate in the territory of two states?” Merkel wrote.

“These examples – all of which are on the agenda for our summit – already suffice to show that global challenges require international responses,” the English-language article reads.

The Russian authorities have repeatedly denied accusations of “annexing” Crimea, because the Black Sea peninsula reunified with Russia voluntarily after a referendum, as well as claims that Moscow could in any way be involved in hostilities in Ukraine’s east, which have by now left thousands of people dead.

The Group of Seven or G7 is a union of advanced economies consisting of the UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, the US, France and Japan. Its major goals are to search for solutions to the global political and social problems.
Russia joined the G7 in 1997, making it the G8 and marking a milestone in Moscow’s rapprochement with the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But the country was expelled from the group last year in protest against Moscow supporting the referendum in Crimea, where the majority of people voted for secession from Ukraine and for joining Russia.
Leaders of the G7 nations then refused to participate at a G8 meeting in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.