Evening Standard, London, Anthony Hilton Column.

By Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, London Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

May 12--CURRENCY CHALLENGE IN THE AIR: The world's leaders meet in just over three weeks at the annual economic summit. The location is Evian les Bains, which we must hope is sufficiently attractive for President Bush and his team to overcome any lingering temptation to boycott the meeting to humiliate the French hosts for their stand on Iraq.

Interestingly, the first of these summits not quite 30 years ago also took place in France. The then French leader, Valery Giscard D'Estaing, brought together the heads of the leading nations in 1974 at Rambouillet to try to work out what to do about the first oil price shock, oil having just quadrupled as result of the 1973 …