Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi, the Emir of Qatar and the President of the United Arab Emirates will be present for a special session on Iran on Tuesday.
Parade of guests
A parade of world leaders will take place over the next three days, with France keen to expand the reach of the G7 beyond its membership of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was among the first guests to arrive and was to be joined by other non-G7 leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Beyond politics, Sam Altman, head of artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, Anthropic chief Dario Amodei and Arthur Mensch of their European rival Mistral AI will attend a lunch on Wednesday on protecting minors in the digital sphere.
“The aim is to have new agreements, convergences between the G7 countries and its partners (…) to find common solutions, reduce tensions in the world and improve the state of our economies,” Macron said in an Instagram video.
A vast security lockdown is in place for the summit, mobilising thousands of police officers and troops in an operation that extends to neighbouring Switzerland, where protesters clashed with police on Sunday.
‘Not ready’
European leaders and Canada are also expected to raise the need for renewed pressure on Russia to move towards a peace settlement in the war with Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
Zelenskyy on Monday urged a “decisive and substantive to” response from G7 leaders after the latest wave of Russian strikes.
He revealed that he had proposed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G7, but that Moscow was “not ready” for it.
Trump’s G7 stay was due to begin with talks with Macron on Monday from 1500 GMT, followed by a working dinner with all participants.
Unusually, he is set to extend his stay in France by dining with Macron at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on Wednesday after the G7 concludes.
Macron insisted the meal would not be a “gala dinner” and acknowledged that Trump “needed to stay to the end” of this G7, unlike the previous edition in Canada, where the American president left early.
