World leaders gather for working dinner at G-20 summit
Pittsburgh: US President Barack Obama welcomed world leaders to the G-20 summit at a working dinner. Leaders including Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French
President Nicholas Sarkozy, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Japan's new
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama among others, arrived with their spouses at the
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Group of 20 leaders are working to
seal an agreement on phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels at their Pittsburgh
summit but have no fixed date for the change, G-20 officials said. Many G-20 governments
give tax breaks and direct payments to companies that help them produce coal,
oil and other fossil fuels that cause greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
The subsidies account for tens of billions of dollars alone in the United States.
The United States and the European Union have pressed developing economies such
as China, India and Russia to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, saying such a move
would help a global push to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
