ROME (AP) — The Latest on the Group of 20 summit taking place in Rome:
ROME — Health and finance officials who gathered ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Rome warned of a two-track pandemic recovery, with COVID-19 vaccine and spending gaps slowing poorer countries from bouncing back.
Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund, said Friday that efforts to speed vaccinations were short $20 billion needed to pursue a goal of 40% of the world vaccinated by year’s end and 70% by the middle of next year.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the increasing divergence between developing and developed countries would be “a major strategic risk for the rest of the world.”
The ministers decided to create a G-20 joint task force to ensure efforts to combat the pandemic and prevent future ones are adequately funded.
The G-20 has supported the UN-backed COVAX initiative, which has failed to alleviate dire shortages in poor countries. Summit negotiators have been focusing on efforts to strengthen local health resources, vaccine supply chains and vaccine production in less prosperous countries.
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ROME — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow may not provide the boost for global efforts to fight climate change that many are hoping for.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a G-20 summit in Rome, Guterres said “there is a serious risk that Glasgow will not deliver.”
He said that despite updated climate targets by many countries, “we are still careening towards climate catastrophe.”
Guterres said there are “serious questions” about some of those pledges and noted that collectively they won’t be enough to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the target set in U.N. talks on fighting climate change.
He said G-20 leaders in Rome, whose countries are responsible for most of the world’s global greenhouse gas emissions, have an opportunity to “put things on track” for the Glasgow talks, which will begin as the Rome summit ends.
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VATICAN CITY — U.S. President Joe Biden has arrived at the Vatican for a private meeting with Pope Francis.
The world’s two most notable Roman Catholics plan to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and poverty.
Biden and his wife Jill arrived at the Vatican in an unusually long motorcade of more than 80 vehicles, owing in part to Italian COVID-19 restrictions on the number of people sharing a car. A dozen Swiss Guards stood at attention in the San Damaso courtyard of the Apostolic Palace to greet them.
Biden is in Rome for the Group of 20 summit.
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VATICAN CITY — South Korean President Moon Jae-in has given Pope Francis a statue of a cross made with barbed wire from the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.
Moon, a Catholic, called on Francis on Friday before the start of the Group of 20 summit in Rome.
The Vatican, which didn’t allow independent media in the audience, said Francis gave Moon a medallion replicating Bernini’s original plan for St. Peter’s Square. The design envisages the two main colonnades of the piazza embracing humanity in the church.
South Korean presidential officials had said they expected Moon and the pope to discuss a possible papal visit to North Korea since Francis had previously expressed a desire to do so if it becomes possible. Moon first floated the idea of a papal visit to the North in 2018 when he revealed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had said the pope would be “enthusiastically” welcomed in the officially atheist North.
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ROME — Italy is deploying 5,300 extra troops and police officers, curbing public transport and sealing off a whole neighborhood of Rome to keep the peace during this weekend’s Group of 20 summit.
Police were out in force already Friday as leaders began arriving, and schools in the Italian capital canceled afternoon activities so students could get home before most roadblocks were set up. Protests and demonstrations were planned throughout the weekend.
The main security zone was around the “Nuvola” cloud-like convention center in Rome’s Fascist-era EUR neighborhood. But other areas were being cordoned off at different times depending on where the leaders were, including around the presidential palace and even the Trevi Fountain.
COVID-19 economic recovery and climate change are the two main issues being discussed by the leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies, who are gathering in Rome before heading to Glasgow, Scotland, for the U.N. climate conference.