[7/22/01 Canadian Press] Genoa - Next year's G-8 summit will take place high in the Rocky Mountain resort of Kananaskis (Alberta) in an effort to create a more intimate and casual atmosphere and to avoid protesters.
"It's exactly what some of the leaders wanted to have," Mr. Chrétien said Sunday at the close of the three-day Genoa summit. "(French President Jacques) Chirac suggested to go to Nunavut." 
After the raging street battles, arson, vandalism and death of a protester here in the medieval port of Genoa, Canada hopes to provide a more austere, serene environment.
A number of the leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries expressed frustration this week over the protests that have come to dominate such international meetings. That dismay was galvanized by the police shooting Friday of a 23-year-old Italian demonstrator, the first such fatality in the increasingly hostile protests that have taken place since the Seattle WTO conference in 1999. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi openly speculated last week that this G8 could be the last, an idea later dismissed by Mr. Chrétien.
"I knew there was something wrong with (the summit) process," Mr. Chrétien said Sunday. "I had no problem convincing the leaders ... They're excited about it."
Only a fraction of the more than 2,000 delegates who attended the Genoa event will travel to Canada next year for the June 26-28 summit. Mr. Chrétien said the hotel in Kananaskis has room for only 350 delegates, and if more want to go "they'll have to bring their sleeping bags."
The consensus is that something must be done to take the focus off violent protests - even if that means bringing representatives of protest groups to the table.
Mr. Chrétien said Canada has experience holding summits in the face of adversity, and pointed to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.
"If the fence was just a little bit stronger, there would have been no problem," Mr. Chrétien said Friday.
But higher, stronger fences are clearly not the solution. The 10-kilometre perimeter wall in Genoa was made of heavy-grade, fine-meshed steel - mesh too narrow to easily slip fingers through and climb, unlike the Quebec City fence. In places in the narrow, winding alleys of Genoa's medieval city centre, the fence rose five storeys. Steel shipping containers were also placed across some major thoroughfares to further impede marching protesters. Genoa was a city prepared for a seige, and the battle raged as if on cue.
Plastic-backed, hand-held mirrors were fashionable among the protesters here. The mirrors were at first held up to police and cameras in a pacifist gesture of self-reflection but later became soaring projectiles that shattered on impact.
John Kirton, a professor at the University of Toronto and devoted G8 watcher, said the Italian port city provided a hothouse atmosphere for radical protesters from across Europe, who could easily mix among the more mainstream dissenters here.
"I don't think some of these European anarchists and communists would feel so welcome in Calgary," he said in an interview.
But the question remains, does any city or region want to host an international summit in light of recent experiences in Seattle, Quebec City, Prague, Goteburg, Sweden, and Genoa?
"Genoa projected outside an image of death, destruction, looting and violence," the town's newspaper, Il Secolo XIX, said in a front-page editorial headlined All Defeated.
Mr. Berlusconi met Saturday with Genoa officials and offered them government money to repair damage to the city.
Genoa's residents were infuriated by the security measures here that turned the port into an armed encampment. Most who lived in the most secure "red zone" simply abandoned the city for the duration of the summit.
"This violence is before the eyes of everybody, and everything was done to try to prevent it," said Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero.
The Italians spent millions of dollars sprucing up Genoa in advance of the event. Mr. Berlusconi had even admonished locals not to hang out their laundry with the world watching. Outside the main fence, defiant residents waved undergarments from windows and balconies at passing marchers - who shouted "Show us your underwear!"
The leaders, delegations and media stayed on cruise ships docked adjacent to the meeting and working areas around the harbour. One pundit joked that the next evolution will be for such summits to be held on submarines.
Or a mountain refuge.
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[posted 7/23/01]
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