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| - Finance ministers from the G7 nations will meet in London next month for their first major face-to-face talks in over a year, with pandemic recovery plans high on the agenda, Britain said Tuesday. The ministers will meet at Lancaster House on June 4 and 5, a week before the G7 Leaders' Summit in Cornwall, southwest England. Britain has hosted three meetings of global finance ministers since it took over the G7 presidency in January, but all have been virtual due to coronavirus restrictions. However, June's meeting, in which Britain will "seek to progress" its priorities of "building a green and inclusive global economic recovery" following the pandemic, will be in person as restrictions are eased. The ministers will be joined by the European Commission, World Bank, IMF, and OECD "in the first in-person Finance Track meeting in over a year", the finance ministry said. The G7 summit in Cornwall will be the first since Joe Biden became US president, with the global response to Covid-19 and climate change expected to dominate the talks. It will be the group's first in-person meeting in nearly two years after the 2020 event was cancelled due to the global health crisis. Leaders and ministers from the seven nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- have met virtually in recent months. Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 throughout 2021, has invited leaders from Australia, India and South Korea to attend as guest countries. jwp/phz/lth
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