Obama advisers hold meetings on G20 sidelines

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two advisers to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will meet this weekend with officials from Russia, China, Britain, Germany and several other countries on the sidelines of this weekend's Group of 20 summit on the global financial system.

Obama, who takes office on January 20, is keeping his distance from the summit, which is being hosted by Republican President George W. Bush and is aimed at addressing the global financial meltdown.

Obama, a Democrat, has said there should be no confusion over the fact that the United States has only one president at a time. Neither he nor his aides will participate in the summit meetings on Friday and Saturday.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Iowa congressman Jim Leach, both informal advisers to Obama, have been asked by the president-elect to meet with delegates to the summit. They will report back to him on their meetings.

A list of meetings the two have set up include a meeting that took place on Thursday with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and meetings on Friday with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Albright and Leach were to meet on Friday with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

They also have meetings scheduled with officials from Russia, India, Canada, Germany, China, Italy, Britain, Japan and France as well as an aide to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Albright served as secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton. Leach is a moderate Republican who chaired the House of Representatives Banking and Financial Services Committee, where he was a key player in the 1999 law that overhauled the financial services industry.

The Group of 20 includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating council presidency and the European Central Bank.