Toyako, Japan - Under pressure to deliver, the leaders of the world's seven richest countries and Russia will meet in Japan on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the impact of spiralling food and oil prices, as well as poverty in Africa and global warming.

The Group of Eight (G8) summit is taking place amid tight security in the exclusive Hotel Windsor, nestled in the mountains of Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.

More than 21,000 police officers, some equipped with sprays and bells to keep the region's bears away, have been deployed to the area. A relatively peaceful demonstration attended by some 5,000 anti-globalization activists was held in the island's city of Sapporo on Saturday.

But protesters were being kept at a safe distance from the summit's location.

Meeting more than 800 kilometres away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, the world's most powerful heads of state and government will be expected to use the quiet retreat by Lake Toyako to meditate on some of the most pressing problems facing the world.

But they are under growing pressure to come up with concrete solutions, rather than issue mere expressions of goodwill. And one of its participants, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has already warned that the G8 needs to expand and accommodate growing heavyweights like China and India if it is to make a difference.

"I think it is unreasonable to continue to meet as eight to solve the big questions of the world, forgetting China, which has 1.3 billion people, and not inviting India, with its 1 billion people," Sarkozy was quoted as saying in Paris ahead of his departure for Japan.

The leaders of India and China are already invited to G8 summits, but they attend separate meetings as part of the so-called Outreach Group, which comprises developing countries and institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

Sources in Japan said one of the proposals at Lake Toyako involves plans to stockpile grains to better cope with future food crises.

The proposal would require each G8 nation to store specific amounts of grains and release them into the market in a coordinated effort to stabilize grain prices when necessary. Currently, Japan and Germany are the only G8 nations that have surplus grains in stock.

The system is modelled after the International Energy Agency's program for stockpiling crude oil in preparation for an energy crisis. Grains which cannot be stored for a long time, such as wheat, would be replenished to maintain the allocated stockpile amounts.

The move comes amid warnings from World Bank President Robert Zoellick that surging food and fuel prices are quickly leading the world's poorest countries into a "danger zone" that severely threatens their economic development.

On climate change, European Union officials said they want the meeting to issue "stronger language" than the one contained in the final document of last year's summit in Germany.

But this year's host, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, has already cautioned observers against expecting a deal on a successor of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for a 5-per-cent reduction of global emissions on their 1990 levels, and which is due to expire in 2012.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among those pushing the hardest for a deal, warning her colleagues ahead of the summit that the G8 should lead by example.

"I hope we will be able to make some joint commitments that clearly show that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 50 per cent by the middle of the century," she said, noting that rapidly emerging economies also needed to do their bit for the environment.

Japan also wants the summit to commit to an international agreement to halve the world's extreme poverty rates by 2015.

But there are growing concerns that leaders intend to backtrack on a previous pledge, made at their meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, to raise annual development aid to Africa to 25 billion dollars.

Monday and Tuesday's summit was preceded by a bilateral meeting between Fukuda and US President George W Bush, who celebrated his 62nd birthday on Sunday.

The G8 countries are Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. (dpa)