G7: Foreign ministers discuss global threats at London summit

The G7 is discussing global challenges including climate change and threats to human rights.

Foreign ministers from the world's leading economies are meeting in London for their first face-to-face talks in more than two years.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is leading discussions on the crisis in Myanmar, as well as relations with Russia, China and Iran.

The talks, held amid tight Covid restrictions, will finish on Wednesday.

The G7 group - the world's seven largest so-called advanced economies - is made up of the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa have also been invited as guests, as the UK tries to deepen ties with the Indo-Pacific region.

The UK, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the G7, will host a summit of leaders in Cornwall next month.

Mr Raab, wearing a face mask, welcomed counterparts earlier at Lancaster House in London, with forearm bumps replacing the usual handshakes.

After talks on Myanmar on Tuesday morning, the G7 has been discussing issues including the crisis in Libya and the war in Syria.

Mr Raab is expected to urge stronger co-operation between the G7 and the guest nations at a working dinner on Tuesday evening.

Lancaster House in central London has played host to many historic negotiations, but rarely will it have seen such diplomatic speed dating as it will later.

For the next few days, foreign ministers will scurry round the clock from meeting to meeting, doing as much business face to face as they can after months of virtual diplomacy.

They will discuss the world's big geopolitical issues: from China to Myanmar, Ethiopia to Ukraine, Syria to the Sahel.

The underlying theme will be how they can best organise to defend international rules and open societies against the threat of autocratic regimes.

And for the UK, the meeting's host, it's a big test to see if its global foreign policy can live up to its name.

The summit comes amid criticism over the UK's decision to cut overseas aid spending from 0.7% of national income to 0.5% - a reduction of more than £4bn.

Mr Raab said this had been a "difficult decision" but that the UK still had scope "to be an even greater force for good in the world".

On Monday, it was announced that the G7 would use the summit to commit to investing $15bn (£10.8bn) to help women in developing countries.

They are also expected to agree a new target of sending 40 million more girls from low and middle-income countries to school within five years.