WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China has not been asked to be a full participant in the annual Group of Eight (G8) summit, but rather to join in a meeting between G8 leaders and about a dozen other nations, U.S. officials said on Friday.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin had earlier told Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing he would be welcome to join leaders of the world's traditional economic powers and Russia at a G8 summit in Evian, France, in early June.
"The (French) president (Jacques Chirac) sincerely desires your presence at this major international rendezvous," Raffarin said in the presence of journalists.
It was not clear from his statement to what extent France intended China to take part in the prestigious summit, which gathers traditional economic powers Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States as well as Russia.
"The French have not invited them to be G8 participants," said a senior U.S. official who did not wish to be identified.
A statement issued by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher's office said Washington welcomed China's participation in a separate meeting organized at the summit between the G8 leaders and about a dozen other nations.
"The G8 meeting has, for some years, been discussing opportunities for enhanced dialogue and cooperation between the large, industrialized countries and developing, emerging or poor countries," Boucher said in the statement.
"At this year's summit in Evian, a separate meeting has been scheduled between the G-8 leaders and a group of about a dozen countries whose leaders have been invited to participate in a separate meeting during the summit. The United States welcomes the participation of China in this meeting," he said.
The June 1-3 summit would be the first face-to-face meeting between Chirac and Bush since the Iraq war. France's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq soured relations between Washington and Paris.
Russia and Germany took France's side in opposing U.N. backing for war in Iraq and China too voiced support for Chirac's stand. Washington went ahead with Britain, and waged war without the United Nations (news - web sites), and bad feeling still runs deep over Paris's "non."
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