ABSTRACT
On 14 July 1989, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sent a letter to President Francois Mitterrand expressing the Soviet Union’s wish to be associated with the summits. Group of Seven (G7) leaders met in Birmingham for half a day on 15 May, before the official start of the Group of Eight summit. Indonesia, as chair of the nonaligned movement, was invited to a 1993 pre-summit dinner in Tokyo by Japan and the US. Ukraine was represented at the Moscow Nuclear Safety and Security Summit in 1996. Writing on the eve of the 1996 Lyon Summit, Zbigniew Brzezinski notes that “the very concept of the G7 not only has become compromised but distorts global realities”. China merits comment as a plausible future candidate. It is a potentially major economic power, although its lack of commitment to democracy and human rights places it outside the small circle of like-minded major democratic countries with advanced, primarily market-based economies that has comprised the G7.
