You've got mail, G8 mail

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a self-declared computer novice, could soon be getting a lot more keyboard practice.

At Saturday’s session of the annual Group of Eight summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed the leaders stay in touch by exchanging e-mail messages. “The suggestion was accepted unanimously,” German spokesman Uwe-Carsten Heye told journalists.

While United States President Bill Clinton is known to tap away and shop online, Mori touched a keyboard for the first time last month. “I was typing for 30 minutes. To tell you the truth, I am not computer literate,” he said then.

It was not clear how much Putin knew about new technology, however. One issue on the G8 agenda is cybercrime and computer security and one official said leaders had to consider security issues before firing off e-mails that hackers could intercept.

“You will have to ask the leaders individually if they will all take advantage of this,” said Uwe-Carsten Heye, in a diplomatic way of dealing with the question of whether G8 leaders would give up secure telephones and cables for the public Internet.

The G8, comprising the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada and Russia, adopted on Saturday an Information Technology (IT) charter and set up a Dot Force task group to help developing nations catch up on IT.

The Group of Eight leading nations wrapped up their annual summit yesterday with a raft of worthy promises to help lagging poor countries cut their debts, fight disease and harness the power of new technologies. G8 leaders also hailed the strength of the world economy and agreed to do their best to launch a new round of global trade talks by the end of the year. Reuters