Sea Island chosen as site of G-8 world summit

By DICK PETTYS Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA (AP) -- President Bush has chosen a posh island resort community on the Georgia coast to host next year's meeting of leaders from the world's major industrial countries.

The White House announced Tuesday that Sea Island will be the site of the G-8 summit next June, a location Gov. Sonny Perdue described as "a great venue for security." The island 60 miles south of Savannah is close to several major military bases and a federal law enforcement training center.

Protesters have had a growing presence at the annual summits, where leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States meet to discuss economic and political issues.

During the summit last month in Evian, France, protesters generally were kept to neighboring Switzerland, where leaders were left wondering who would pay the bill for cleaning up after the vandalism and looting.

A Homeland Security official in Washington said security at the summit is expected to be run by the federal government. As a "national special security event," the summit would be protected by Homeland Security personnel, including those from the Secret Service, Coast Guard, and other agencies.

Perdue will conduct a formal news conference on the island Wednesday with a White House official and the planning director for the June 8-10 conference, his office announced.

He declared that the state will demonstrate a hospitality "unmatched anywhere" for the summit.

The United States was earlier named the host country of the G-8 economic summit, and it was up to the president to choose a location.

Denver hosted the last G-8 summit held in the United States, in 1997. Houston hosted the meeting in 1990.

Sea Island is a private, 5-mile-long resort island about halfway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Fla. It is owned by the Sea Island Co., formed in the early 1900s by auto manufacturer Howard Coffin, founder of the Hudson Motor Co.

Among the top properties on the island is The Cloister, a Mediterranean-style oceanfront resort that opened in 1928. There are also about 500 private homes on the island.

Perdue said he had been pitching Georgia as host for the summit for months, most recently last month when he talked with the president during a fund-raiser at Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro.

"The president is very much a casual sort of guy in these meetings. He didn't want something that was really stuffy and formal. He wanted a casual, pleasant environment, and we think St. Simons and Sea Island sold themselves in that regard."

Sea Island may have had a sentimental edge with President Bush because his father honeymooned there in 1945 and returned for his 50th anniversary in 1995.

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