In a surprise move the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday gave his approval to a joint statement from the G8 foreign ministers backing the deployment of outside monitors to ease Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The statement was issued in Rome at the end of a two-day meeting of foreign ministers on the eve of the three-day G8 summit in Genoa. Although the Italian Foreign Minister, Mr Renato Ruggiero, expressed the hope that the summit would send out "a message of hope and trust" on the positive aspects of globalisation, it was inevitably the complex Middle East question which dominated yesterday's meeting in Rome.
In the wake of the recent spate of violence which has seen more than 600 people killed since last September - 39 of them since a US-brokered truce came into effect on June 13th - the ministers called on both sides to let outside monitors oversee a truce.
The Middle East question will, of course, be only one of many that feature in this weekend's talks between the heads of government of the US, Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy. The issues facing ministers range from alleviation of global poverty, efforts to liberalise world trade, the threat from global warming and the US administration's controversial national missile defence scheme.
To some extent those issues are likely to be overshadowed by the massive anti-globalisation protests due to be staged today and tomorrow by the 100,000 strong "Seattle People" movement that ranges from conservative Catholics and environmentalists to Marxists and anarchists. Throughout yesterday, thousands of anti-globalisation protesters from all over Italy and many European countries flowed into the port city, arriving mainly by bus and train.
The summit takes place against an imposing backdrop of an 18,000-strong security presence which includes soldiers, policemen, army marksmen and navy divers, supported by the US aircraft carrier Enterprise, ground-to-air missiles near Genoa Airport and constant helicopter surveillance. While the CIA has taken seriously reports of a possible terrorist attack by Islamic fundamentalists, the summit organisers are inevitably more concerned about the problems posed by the anti-globalisation protest.
At the end of a week marked by four letter-bomb incidents, including one affecting a Genoa police station, tension continued to mount yesterday as bomb alarms (all false) were signalled in Genoa and in Turin, Florence, Milan and Naples.
The host Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, facing the first major test of his recently-installed, centre-right government, personally oversaw the final summit preparations, pronouncing himself well satisfied. Mr Berlusconi's confident mood was echoed by his Interior Minister, Mr Claudio Scajola, who said: "We are on full alert but we believe that the G8 summit can pass off relatively smoothly."
Those optimistic words contrasted with the views expressed by one of the protest leaders, Mr Luca Casarini, who promised that his supporters would try to break into the high-security "Red Zone" around the central Palazzo Ducale where the summit takes place.