Washington Post | by Christine Haughney | February 1, 2002
With snow-capped Alps replaced by rain-slicked skyscrapers, the 31st World Economic Forum meeting, held for the past three decades in Davos, Switzerland, began here today amid an avalanche of talk and muted protest.
About 3,000 corporate executives, cultural icons and members of the media elite from around the globe descended on a heavily fortified Midtown to kick off the five-day conference, meant to discuss the state of the world economy and ponder ways to reduce the threat of international terrorism by reducing poverty and improving education.
The participants, many of whom paid more than $ 20,000 for the privilege of rubbing elbows with one another, found themselves outnumbered by police. A battalion of 4,000 officers spread out across the city and manned the metal barricades and municipal dump trucks that surrounded the elegant Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the meeting is taking place and where many of the participants are staying. As former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who played a principal role in steering the meeting to Manhattan, spoke at an opening news conference, attendees wasted little time settling into salons around the Waldorf to begin thinking big thoughts.
At a session on the status of global economic recovery, Gail Fosler, chief economist at the Conference Board, a New York-based business research group, said she believed the U.S. economy had begun to rebound. "My view is that the U.S. recession is over, that November will be viewed as the trough," she said.
Klaus Zimmermann, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, said he believed Europe's recovery would trail that of the United States and not fully begin until the second half of the year.
At a forum on global security, some participants warned the Bush administration against using force to battle regimes in Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, President Bush described those three countries as an "axis of evil" that threatens American and world security, leading some to believe U.S. military action was imminent.
"If you topple Saddam Hussein, there will be another Saddam Hussein somewhere else," said Christoph Bertram, director of the German Institute for International Affairs and Security.
Meanwhile, a dizzying array of discussions pressed forward on issues such as the environment, the media's role in "restoring global confidence" and efforts to bridge social and technological divides and find shared values across cultures.
Police had braced themselves for the kind of violence that marked recent meetings of the World Trade Organization and other international economic bodies. But around the city, protesters remained peaceful as they expressed their opposition to corporate globalization and its effects on workers and the environment.
Across from a Gap store on tony Fifth Avenue, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney led a group of about 1,000 well-behaved labor activists and others in protest, saying the global economy "does not work for the working people" and criticizing Enron Corp. as an example of corrupt corporate behavior. "This is why we are here -- to challenge Enron economics here and abroad," he said.
Protesters were almost nonexistent directly outside the Waldorf. A few hundred members of Falun Gong -- the religious group banned in China -- wearing matching yellow scarves participated in group exercises on Park Avenue. And a small handful of activists from the environmental group Friends of the Earth waved signs. Police reported eight arrests for the day, none near the hotel.
Other organized protests are scheduled for the rest of the conferene , and there are at least two counter-meetings, similar to the "Shadow Convention" at the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. There are swank parties taking place all around the city as well, maintaining the Davos tradition of mixing intellectual discourse with a healthy dose of cocktail conversation. The main social event, a party on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, takes place Saturday night.
Unlike at previous meetings, participants here are almost entirely isolated from the media, which is kept away from the Waldorf at a hotel across the street. Reporters can watch certain forums on closed-circuit television and send messages to participants through sleek flat-screen terminals.
But often the closest one can get to an actual attendee is to gaze at their photograph and biography in a thick volume distributed today that resembles a mini-phone book. Only this phone book includes only the likes of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and rock star and political activist Bono. The pair will share the stage on Saturday for a discussion on Third World debt relief.Washington Post:
