DEAUVILLE, France — President Barack Obama met with world leaders Thursday to discuss military operations in Libya and the implications of the Arab Spring at the start of the Group of Eight summit, a forum that a year ago remained preoccupied with the global economic crisis.
The shift to national-security issues this year has been driven by the anti-government demonstrations sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, a process Obama has said he will encourage with financial support for the region’s emerging democracies.
The G8 will take up the issue today by calling on several multilateral lending institutions to help countries that have recently toppled long-standing autocracies avoid economic pitfalls that could undermine their evolution to democracy. The leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, whose people overthrew dictators this year, will attend today’s session.
The large pool of young, frustrated Arabs, short on political and economic opportunity for decades, has provided the energy behind the anti-government unrest, unfolding from Algeria through the Persian Gulf states.
But administration officials worry that weak economies will doom the revolutions before new governments take up long-demanded changes.
As the summit comes to a conclusion, the G8 will ask the International Monetary Fund and several development banks to devise fiscal policies for Egypt and Tunisia so that their post-revolution period will not bring inflation, deficits and a sluggish economy.
G8 members will also be called on to pledge financial help for those nations, as Obama did last week in proposing $2 billion in debt relief and loan guarantees for Egypt.
“Without economic modernization, it will be very hard for governments trying to democratize to show people that democracy delivers,” David Lipton, the National Security Council’s senior director for international economic affairs, told reporters.
The summit at this wind-swept resort town brings Obama together with his key European allies, as well as with such strategic partners as Russia and Japan, at a moment he has described as “pivotal.”
Lasting much of the past decade, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are entering new stages.
But Obama is also being asked to do more in Libya, where NATO is leading an operation to protect civilians rising up against leader Moammar Khadafy. It is unclear, so far, whether Obama is willing to commit more resources to the rebel cause.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hosting this summit, whose slogan is “new world, new ideas.” For one Thursday session, Sarkozy brought in a group of Internet pioneers to meet with the G8 leaders about the future of the Web and the global economy.
Among them was Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.
