British Prime Minister Tony Blair is preparing for a tour of European capitals as he attempts to secure support for action to tackle African poverty and climate change at the G8 summit next month.
As finance ministers looked close to cementing a deal on third-world debt relief in talks in London, Downing Street revealed details of a final whirlwind round of negotiations.
Mr Blair will embark on his three-day diplomatic mission tomorrow in Moscow, closely followed by talks in Berlin on Monday and Luxembourg and Paris on Tuesday.
But while poverty and the environment will top Mr Blair's G8 agenda, ongoing rows over the EU's budget and constitution are bound to feature prominently as well.
Details of the visit were confirmed as Chancellor Gordon Brown sounded an optimistic note on efforts to get international backing for plans to write off $50 billion of African debt.
He said he believed there was a "will to come to an agreement" as he began two-days of negotiations with his counterparts from the other G8 nations. "It would be a historic agreement" he said, welcoming the support of the US for the proposals to cancel the multi-lateral debts owed by the 25 poorest countries to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank.
"Much is still to be done but I think there is a will to do this in a way that would see the biggest debt settlement the world has ever seen."
The Chancellor said the "comprehensive" plan would deal with 40 years of debts built up by dozens of countries worth $50 billion dollars.
He sounded a less hopeful note that the US could be persuaded to sign up to his plans to double the cash available to poor countries by buying bonds on the international market.
The International Finance Facility scheme will be a key item at the Gleneagles G8 summit in Perthshire on July 6th-8th.
He said it would be "preferable" if all the richest nations were a part of the project but insisted it could still go ahead without Washington. "The Americans will make their final decision, I suppose, at Gleneagles itself and we are still debating all these issues," he said.
But thanks to the support of a number of international partners, he added, one element of the IFF programme - designed to pump billions of dollars into providing vital vaccines - could be "off the ground in the next few weeks".