G-8 meets amid calls to take on new members

The group held its initial summit in France in 1975 with six members: the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and the then-economic upstart in the world, Japan. Canada came on board the following year. Russia formally joined in 1997.

In recent years, as G-8 countries have struggled to address the concerns of the rest of the world, such as poverty in Africa, the list of summit participants has ballooned, though the core nations still hold exclusive meetings.

A total of 22 heads of government--the eight members, seven from Africa, and several from other leading economies--will be at the summit in Toyako, northern Japan, and Japanese officials say it's the largest ever.

Members themselves are split over whether they need to formally open the group to new entrants.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been outspokenly in favor, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also supports expansion.

"I think it is imprudent to invite a country like China, a country like India, a country like Brazil, a country like South Africa, a country like Mexico, just for the lunch on the third day," Sarkozy told the French-Japan Club in November. "It is in our interest to put them at the negotiating table, to treat them like partners and to put them face to face with their obligations."

Others are not so sure. Host Japan, which has long basked in the honor of being the G-8's only Asian member, has repeatedly shrugged off suggestions of expansion in the weeks leading up to the summit.

"Bringing together the heads of state of, say, 40 countries for two days of talks ends up constraining everyone's opportunity to speak," said Masaharu Kohno, the deputy foreign minister and the country's "sherpa" representative for pre-summit negotiations.

Then there's the question of democracy.

John Kirton, director of the G-8 research group at the University of Toronto, argues the summit's founding principles included promotion of open democracy, and he said the group had played key roles in democratic transitions over the years, including Spain in the mid 1970s and the Soviet Union in the 1990s. By that criteria, China does not meet requirements for membership, he has written.