January 25, 2001 | By Michael Shields
Hundreds of Swiss police, army security specialists and coils of barbed wire greeted the world's corporate and political elite arriving on Thursday for the annual Davos business summit.
Nervousness about the state of the global economy mingled with worries that violent demonstrators could disrupt the week-long annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), now in its 31st year, which runs until January 30.
Swiss Television estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 police from across Switzerland were on hand to choke off the kind of anti-globalization protests that hit the European Union summit in Nice, International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings in Prague and Davos itself last year.
At last year's forum, some 2,000 anti-free trade demonstrators, denouncing the gathering as a "meeting of murderers," broke shop windows and smashed car windscreens at a McDonald's restaurant.
Local merchants and residents in the Alpine resort grumbled on Thursday about this year's tight security, which featured reinforcements from the Swiss army specialists who guard sensitive facilities.
The local canton's police chief has called the operation the strictest clampdown Switzerland has seen in decades. Police were braced for clashes on Saturday when militant demonstrators plan to defy a local ban on protests.
Swiss police have urged even peaceful protesters to stay away from Davos for fear they could fuel violence.
Police seal off Davos as business summit starts
Eager to dispel critics' view of Davos as a capitalist conspiracy to set the world agenda, organizers say they have given trade unions, lobby groups, environmentalists and other critics of the system unprecedented exposure this year.
Dozens of heads of state and hundreds of senior corporate executives are among 3,200 participants at the summit in the chic ski spot that has become a magnet for movers and shakers from business and politics.
They include Japan's Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Mexican President Vicente Fox, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are also scheduled to attend, raising the possibility of some Middle East dialogue in Davos.
But no officials from the new administration of U.S. President George W. Bush are expected, according to organizers.
The WEF says demonstrators are targeting the wrong enemy, and emphasizes its efforts to help link developing countries to the global knowledge-based economy, fight killer diseases in the Third World and promote peace and economic development.
"In the movies, business people are almost always the bad guys, ready to sacrifice their workers, their neighbors - even the planet itself in the name of profit," International Chamber of Commerce President Richard McCormick wrote in a commentary.
"If this were true, wouldn't we have run out of workers, neighbors and planets by now?"
Activists who say the forces of globalization only deepen the split between haves and have-nots are setting up rival events in Davos and elsewhere.
Some 10,000 are expected at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that will run in parallel to the Davos meeting and condemn neo-liberal economic policies.36916:
