Reuters / By Adrian Croft
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The theme of this year's World Economic Forum business summit was "bridging the divides," but the meeting showed that divisions over globalisation remain as wide as ever.
The six-day annual meeting, where heads of many of the world's biggest companies rub shoulders with presidents, academics and artists, drew to a close on Tuesday amid controversy over its role and police handling of demonstrators.
On the streets, protests in Davos, Zurich and other Swiss cities showed anti-globalisation activists who have disrupted international meetings from Seattle to Prague remain a potent force.
Inside the tightly guarded conference centre at this chic Swiss ski resort, two of the dominant subjects were whether the U.S. economic slowdown will spread to the rest of the world and the impact of the burst Internet investment bubble.
But a series of developing country leaders voiced concern globalisation is creating a widening gulf between rich and poor.
"When people talk about globalisation, what we see is a global world that is divided into two. There is a structural fault of poverty. On one side of that fault are the powerful and the wealthy; on the other side are the powerless and the poor," South African President Thabo Mbeki told the forum this week.
Rapid technological advances, trade liberalisation and the sense that markets and corporations are growing ever larger has sparked fears over jobs, the environment and traditional ways of life, helping to spur a popular backlash against globalisation.
It sparked huge and sometimes violent protests against international meetings such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) conference in Seattle in late 1999 and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Prague last year.
TRADE TALKS DRIVE
Globalisation will remain a hot topic as the WTO gears up for a fresh attempt to launch a new round of global trade negotiations in Qatar late this year.
Davos has become a target because opponents believe participants plot the world's future at secret meetings.
To counter its elitist image, the forum invited 36 grassroots groups this year. But many other groups who focus on the darker side of globalisation stayed away, holding alternative meetings in Davos and also Brazil to address social and environmental issues.
Swiss authorities staged an unprecedented and controversial security crackdown in Davos to prevent a recurrence of the demonstrations and clashes that hit last year's meeting.
After a local ban on protests, police stopped hundreds of people travelling to Davos and turned back a few hundred demonstrators with barricades and water cannon on Saturday.
Returning to Zurich, angry demonstrators fought running battles with police on Saturday evening, torching cars, smashing windows and hurling stones at police who responded with rubber pellets, tear gas and water cannon.
On Monday night, about 100 demonstrators protested in Geneva against what they called repression in Davos, while in Berne, protesters broke windows at a McDonald's restaurant and shops after a demonstration against the Davos meeting.
At a panel discussion at the forum on Tuesday, leaders of human rights and environmental groups complained of a lack of communication between businesses and grassroots groups.
DO COMPANIES UNDERSTAND?
"Do corporations really understand us?," asked Thilo Bode, executive director of environmental group Greenpeace International. "I think the majority of the CEOs (chief executive officers) here are more interested in the cooling of the U.S. economy than in the warming of the planet."
Pierre Sane, secretary-general of human rights group Amnesty International, said it was as if "those who are in power are not living in the same world as we are living in."
"When young activists see...their issues not being addressed, they feel they are not being heard and it is understandable that they resort to violence," he said.
"Just dismissing those NGOs (non-governmental organisations) who resort to violence in Seattle or in Washington, I think is not the right approach. Maybe the method they use is wrong, but we have to take on board the reason why these people are angry."
Sane said the 20th century had been the bloodiest century in history with 200 million people estimated to have died due to wars, political repression and famine.
"Unless the NGO movement...becomes stronger and stronger as we enter this 21st century, I think that the 21st century has the potential to be worse than the 20th century," he said.
Hendrik Verfaillie, chief executive of Monsanto, the U.S. biotechnology leader that is often a target for environmentalists, said the company had changed its ways after initially trying to convince environmental activists that "they basically should shut up."
"We learned that that doesn't work. Some 18 months ago I decided to change the course of action. I started talking to a large number of NGOs," he said. If companies worked together with NGOs interested in finding solutions, "it's a winning proposition for both sides and for society as well," he said.
Greenpeace's Bode acknowledged that the Davos meeting provided a unique opportunity for grassroots groups to put their message across to industry.
Noting environmentalists had held talks on global warming with 42 chief executives of car manufacturers and suppliers in Davos on Monday, Bode said this was possible only in Davos because everyone was together in one place. The question was "how to move that ahead in a more structured way," he said.:
