Blair meets Merkel to prepare G8, EU summits

BERLIN (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair was to hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel here on Sunday, three days ahead of the G8 summit where climate change and aid to Africa will top the agenda.

Merkel's office said they would also use the meeting to prepare for the European Union summit on June 21-22, just days before Blair is due to step down after a decade in power.

His trip to Berlin follows a farewell tour of Africa which took him the length of the world's poorest continent, from Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's Sahara desert encampment to Sierra Leone and South Africa.

Blair, who once described Africa as "a scar on the world's conscience," used the tour to draw attention to African issues such as aid and debt relief ahead of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.

In South Africa, he called on fellow G8 leaders to "step up to the plate" at the June 6-8 summit and do more to alleviate poverty and disease in Africa.

African leaders and anti-poverty campaigners accuse the leaders of the industrialized world of falling far behind on a pledge made at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 to double aid to Africa by 2010.