BRETTON WOODS, N.H. (AP) – The Mount Washington Hotel reportedly is one of two resorts being considered as the location for a summit next year for the leaders of the world’s major industrial countries.

Fifteen resorts around the country were considered for the annual meeting, where heads of state deal with issues such as trade, the environment, drug traffic and terrorism.

Catherine Bedor, one of the owners, told the New Hampshire Sunday News the Mount Washington is one of the final two spots being considered and the only one in the Northeast.

Bedor said G8 conference planners are expected to pick a site by the end of the month for the meeting of leaders that would probably be held next June. She did not know which other resort remains in the running.

“They are interested in a property that not only has some historic significance, but gives the delegates the privacy, amenities and service they need,” Bedor said.

She said teams of conference planners and White House staffers have visited in recent months.

The hotel complex can house about 1,000 guests, and Bedor said planners have indicated there are sufficient accommodations in the area to hold hundreds of support staff and security personnel and journalists from around the world.

The G8 countries – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and, the newest member, Russia – meet annually to deal with major economic and political issues facing the international community. The meetings began in 1975, when delegations from six nations gathered in Rambouillet, France. The most recent summit was held three weeks ago in Evian-les-Bains, France.

Protesters with various causes have gathered in increasing numbers wherever the G8 summits have been held. Anti-globilization demonstrations began at the 1998 summit in Birmingham, England, and the protests turned violent in 2001 at the meeting in Genoa, Italy, where a protester was killed.

One consequence of the demonstrations is that recent meetings have been held at remote, easily secured resorts, rather than in large cities.

If the conference comes to the Mount Washington, world leaders would gather in meeting rooms where, for three weeks in July 1944, 730 delegates from 44 nations held the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The end of World War II was still a year away, but the delegates were looking ahead to stabilizing and rebuilding Europe and preventing countries from retreating into economic and political isolationism.

Delegates at that conference established fixed exchange rates, with the U.S. dollar becoming the main international currency; the International Monetary Fund, which gives member governments economic advice and lends them money when they have trade imbalances and other problems; and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank.

AP-ES-06-22-03 1311EDT

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