News stories by Analysis by Sanjay Suri

Three minutes to speak about the world trade situation was a little more than U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk needed to sum up his country's position on trade; after eight years of talks to thrash out a single trade deal, he needed less time than that.

It has been a bad week for the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. During the week the last meeting in the formal round of pre- Copenhagen talks collapsed in Barcelona. Then, meeting here on the weekend, the G20 finance ministers put the seal on that failure by failing to agree to a financial package.

It has been a bad week for the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. During the week the last meeting in the formal round of pre- Copenhagen talks collapsed in Barcelona. Then, meeting here on the weekend, the G20 finance ministers put the seal on that failure by failing to agree to a financial package.

You could almost begin to divide the figures before you add them up. The numbers being advertised by way of aid to the developing world to contain carbon emissions do not quite add up. What is more certain is the division to follow.

The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have run into a predictable roadblock in setting out brave new directions: a roadblock called memory. What could have been an immensely sensible idea of turning the IMF into a new central bank for the world is up against years of mistrust the IMF has built for itself.

Something that was perhaps only half-expected has happened in Pittsburgh: the G20 has moved on from being an event to becoming an institution.

Almost before anyone knew it, a new language has become current leading up to the two-day G20 meet in Pittsburgh that divides the world in ways that seem suitable at the high table of the day. The new tiers are the developed, the emerging, and of course the poor.

Every one of these 'G' meetings becomes now an occasion for the developing countries - say the emerging economies - to turn that extra energy into a louder voice in the business of global decision-taking.

The tests are coming thick and fast. After the G20 summit in Washington last year, the G20 in London in April, and the G8 in L'Aquila that was substantially a G20, the G20 finance ministers are meeting in London this Friday and Saturday ahead of the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh later this month.

The G8 summit is no climate change meeting, and not formally associated in any sense with the series of negotiating meetings leading up to the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. But the outcome of a G8 sponsored forum on climate change should get environmentalists worried about any outcome in Copenhagen.