Christoph Heusgen, the head of the Munich Security Conference has voiced his support for enlarging the Group of Seven (G-7) major industrialized countries in order for the forum to stay relevant.
"I think it is important that the G-7 group expands," he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) in Berlin.
"The group is characterized by the fact that it is about countries that share common values. They are democratic, market-economy countries," he said.
"But we also see that the relative weight, especially the economic weight, of these countries is decreasing. For this reason, I think an expansion would be logical," he said.
The G-7 includes Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the United States and Britain. Heusgen suggested countries such as South Korea and Australia could join to "increase the clout" of the format.
Heusgen chairs the Munich Security Conference, which gathers together world leaders and high-ranking defense and foreign policy officials every year in the Bavarian city.
Leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20) – a broader grouping of the world's biggest economies – will meet in the Indian capital New Delhi this weekend.
