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Pres ident George W Bush musters top world leaders at a tightly secured island retreat today, with a long-awaited breakthrough in sight which could ease lingering rifts over Iraq.

Bush will host the Group of Eight (G8) summit on secluded Sea Island, a millionaire's ghetto on the US southeast coast, hoping to finally smooth rifts opened by his decision to invade Iraq last year.

And there were signs Monday that leading powers had hammered out a deal on Iraqi sovereignty, as diplomats haggled at the United Nations over a draft resolution. A vote was scheduled for today.

"There's general sense that this is going in a very positive direction and should reach conclusion very soon," Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in Georgia.

Diplomats at the UN were also optimistic over a draft resolution which endorses the new interim government in Iraq and authorises US-led forces to stay in the country after self-rule begins.

As Bush prepared to welcome the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, the US Secret Service clamped a fearsome security blanket over the island, and surrounding coast.

Gunboats prowled inshore waters, while Navy Seal commandos bobbed on rafts in the breakers, opposite idyllic cottages where the leaders were due to stay.

Black iron fences, 2,4 metres high, manned by grim agents sealed off the gate to a single two-lane causeway - the resort's sole link, through a sea of reeds and waving beach grass to its cousin, St Simons Island.

Iraq's newly designated president, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar was due to attend the summit here, but differences among G8 members were likely to persist on other aspects of the country's reconstruction, particularly its debt.

If Washington is pushing to cancel 80% to 90% of Iraq's estimated $120-billion debt, other countries are not so forgiving. Germany and France are not willing to go beyond 50%.

The Americans also face skepticism with their "Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative" to promote political, social and economic reforms.

Arab leaders say reforms must be homegrown. "Initiatives seen as imposed from the outside will only hurt the efforts of genuine reformers in our region," Jordan's King Abdullah II told AFP.

Some countries see US calls for democracy as a code for regime change, others say the US would do better to focus its efforts on ending the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But a senior US official, briefing reporters on the initiative, said the faltering pace of peace talks was a separate matter.

"What we are not accepting is the notion that that is an excuse for failure to reform elsewhere," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The US is also expected to press Europe to speed up reforms in its economy, which even lags behind Japan as it emerges from years in the doldrums.

It is an "optimistic message, but also a message that we need to continue to work," a US official said on condition of anonymity.

This year, the economy is expected to grow 4,6% in the US, 3,4% in Japan and 1,7% in the European single-currency euro zone, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The summit will also discuss terrorism and security and then late tomorrow take up other major issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

On Thursday, the eight leaders will meet with several of their counterparts from Africa, including South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Senegal's Abdulaye Wade, though critics complain the G8 pays little more than lip service to poverty. - Sapa-AFP

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