Group Of Seven Event Blasts Off Unabashed Enthusiasm Displayed By Host Canadians In Halifax

In December 1917, a relief ship collided with a munitions ship in the narrows above Halifax Harbor. The resulting explosion, the largest man-made conflagration before the nuclear age, killed more than 2,000 people and leveled 350 acres of this city.

The second biggest event to hit Halifax began Wednesday, and it was a lot more cheerful. As leaders of the seven largest industrial nations began arriving for their 21st annual summit meeting, Halifax turned out, flags flying, to welcome them. The unabashed enthusiasm here for an event greeted with nonchalance in such past summit sites as London, Tokyo and Naples showed yet again Canada’s desire to be seen as a world power.

Canada is the smallest member of the Group of Seven nations by population and economy - the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy are the others - and has looked to the rest of the world for validation and recognition. In nearly all the summit issues he has chosen to press, Prime Minister Jean Chretien hopes to enhance Canada’s global position as well as achieve accord among the summit attendees.

He wants to add to the powers of international financial institutions, for instance, in part to ensure that Mexico and other Latin American countries can continue growing as markets for Canadian goods, offsetting Canada’s trade dependence on the United States. In addition, Chretien hopes that less volatility in foreign exchange markets might halt the slide of the Canadian dollar, which, until it bottomed out last fall, had dropped farther and faster than the American dollar.

Chretien has openly admitted his frustration with the power of Wall Street investors, whom he often refers to as “those 25-year-old kids in red suspenders,” who can undermine the value of his dollar with a flick of their computer keys.

In a speech in Montreal on Wednesday outlining his summit priorities, Chretien said: “We cannot undo technology. We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot simply expect those famous currency speculators to shut off their computer terminals, hang up their red suspenders and get a life. But what we can do - what we must do - is take effective, concrete action to minimize the vulnerabilities of national economies.”

Similarly on the subject of Bosnia, the summit gives Canada a chance to be heard on a situation largely beyond its control. Canada was one of the first nations to send peacekeeping forces to the former Yugoslavia under the auspices of the United Nations three years ago and has about 800 troops in Bosnia. Its vulnerability there is great, as shown by the decision by the Bosnian Serbs to keep 11 Canadian peacekeeper-hostages after releasing more than 300 others they had been holding.

Canada is frustrated at being excluded from the five-nation “contact group” that spearheads diplomatic efforts in Bosnia. Canadian officials said at briefings before the summit that Bosnia probably would be discussed after the arrival of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who will meet with leaders Saturday, after they have completed their economic discussions.

Canada’s concerns also underlie its support for giving some kind of rapid-response capacity to the United Nations, in theory to prevent situations such as the one in Bosnia from getting out of hand.

“The U.N. must have the capacity to prevent the spreading of a conflict at the beginning rather than having to come later,” Foreign Minister Andre Ouellet said at a breakfast on Wednesday morning.