UK Prime Minister Tony Blair kept his promise (CI No 3,379) and brought the Year 2000 computer crisis to the table at last weekend’s meeting of the Group of Eight or G8 countries in Birmingham, UK, where leaders of the eight countries promised to take urgent action to prevent a worldwide financial crisis. The leaders of the US, Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada and Russia, agreed to work with business to prevent the danger of system failures in defense, telecommunications, financial and other critical systems at the turn of the century. The group also agreed to a meeting of G8 experts in Moscow, where the Russian president Boris Yeltsin has apparently been making strong pleas for action both in his country and worldwide. The G8 leaders said they would work with business, but ultimately it was the responsibility of individual companies to ensure they were Year 2000 compliant.
