After nearly a year of lockdown video meetings, even world leaders failed to escape the mute curse on Friday when British prime minister Boris Johnson had to tell Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, to switch off her microphone.
While Johnson began the G7 online meeting, Ms Merkel suddenly interrupted him as he tried to tell the likes of US president Joe Biden and Italy's new prime minister, Mario Draghi, that he wanted a face-to-face meeting at the G7 summit in June.
“Can you hear us Angela,” Mr Johnson quipped over the German, chuckling. “I think you need to mute.”
Mr Johnson, who is known for gaffes, also claimed that Biden had “nicked” his slogan 'build back better', though Mr Johnson quipped he himself had probably stolen it from somewhere else.
Rules-based system
Britain, which holds the rotating chair of the G7 and is trying to recast itself as a steward of the rules-based international system following Brexit, will ask members to help speed up the development of future vaccines to 100 days.
Mr Johnson is keen to build ties with Mr Biden, who did not support Brexit and who, as a presidential candidate, last year publicly warned Britain against endangering peace in Ireland.
Mr Johnson has said he is interested in the idea of a global treaty on pandemics to ensure proper transparency after the Covid-19 outbreak which was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The Biden administration will pledge $4 billion (€3.3 billion) to Covax, a coronavirus vaccination programme for poorer countries, in hopes of prying loose bigger donations from other governments, US officials said on Thursday.
The EU will offer at the G7 call this afternoon to double its contribution to Covax to €1 billion and it will also promise €100 million in “in-kind” help to Africa for the vaccination process, an EU official said.
Britain, which has pledged £548 million pounds (€634 million) to the Covax programme co-led by the World Health Organisation, will ask other G7 partners to give more.
China
China will also be on the agenda.
In his first major foreign policy speech as president, Mr Biden cast China as the "most serious competitor" of the United States.
“We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance," Mr Biden said on February 4th.
Johnson said the G7 – as “like-minded liberal free-trading democracies” – stood together on issues such as condemnation of the coup in Myanmar and the detention of Alexei Navalny in Russia.
The G7 of the United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada has a combined gross domestic product of about $40 trillion – a little less than half of the global economy.
