THE G-7 leaders yesterday gave themselves a collective slap on the back over the state of their "economic fundamentals". They acknowledged concern over unemployment, made some progress towards agreeing to a plan to reduce the debt of the world's poorest countries and hailed "economic globalisation" as a potential source of more economic growth.
The economic communiques at G-7 summits, are usually bland, and yesterday's was no exception. There are issues that substantially divide the world's seven most industrialised nations, but their commitment to economic growth, tow inflation, reducing budget deficits and increasing their wealth is not one of them. All these commitments were repeated yesterday.
What began in 1975 as a once off informal chat between the most powerful politicians in the world has turned into an annual event. The agenda has moved beyond the economic sphere: today the seven - the political leaders of the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan - will discuss the situation in Bosnia, the Middle East peace process and UN reform.
International attention has grown, and with the growing media interest has come a growing tendency for leaders to indulge in "grand standing", or playing to their domestic public.
President Clinton, for example, came to the summit with the intention of trumpeting his country's considerable achievement in bringing the unemployment rate down to 5.5 per cent, compared to 10 per cent or more in European states. This is election year after all.
The US may have created 9.7 million new jobs since 1993, but President Chirac managed to belittle the achievement yesterday afternoon at a press conference. "The US has created a lot of jobs ... some of those jobs created are highly qualified and well paid, but there are others which are under qualified and underpaid which we would not accept in Europe.
But while the main purpose of G-7 is economic discussion, when 19 US servicemen were killed in a bombing in Saudi Arabia, it was inevitable that the fight against terrorism would dominate discussion, at least for the first meeting of the seven.
As host, Mr Chirac was determined that the rest of the agenda would not be derailed by the US president's wish to be seen to respond to the bombing.
He presented a text to the opening dinner of the seven on Thursday night. Once it was agreed, terrorism was out of the way, and the issues close to his heart - such as aid to underdeveloped countries - could take pride of place.
Nor was the statement on terrorism simply a condemnation of the Dhahran bomb. It placed that attack in the context of other attacks such as the IRA bombing of Manchester and the Supreme Truth (Aum Shinri Kyo) cult's gas attacks on the Tokyo subway last year.
While the G-7 partners agree to oppose terrorism, they disagreed strongly on some means of doing so - such as the US Helms-Burton legislation.
The clear message yesterday to the US was that if it wants solidarity from the other G-7 states on foreign policy, it cannot act alone in a way that harms business outside the US.
The G-7 is not a decision making body. It has no attached institutions and no power to enforce anything. With the growth of other economies, especially in east Asia, it now represents only about half of the world's wealth.
But it represents considerably more of the world's political power, particularly since Russia now participates in its deliberations under the title "G-7 plus one". Its communiques might be innocuous but their provenance makes them worthy of attention.
For the record, the communique says that since last year's G-7 meeting, "economic developments have been on the whole positive and disparities of economic performance among us have been narrowing".