By:JABER AL-HARMI | AP Online As a country in a Muslim region not that far from the war in Afghanistan, this Persian Gulf state had to fight to keep this week's World Trade Organization ministerial meeting.
Delegates coming for the five-day session beginning Friday will find a country where security is tight and dissent rare, yet is home to the Arab world's freest and most influential independent TV station.
After the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States and the ensuing military campaign in Afghanistan, some people worried about the safety of a major diplomatic gathering in the Middle East.
"It's no secret that Doha is located in the vicinity of what is today considered a war zone," Pascal Lamy, commissioner for trade for the European Commission, said at a WTO meeting in Singapore last month. But while other Arab countries have seen protests over U.S. attacks on fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, reaction to America's "war on terrorism" has been muted in Qatar, and officials promise strong security.
Last Tuesday, the Qatari interior minister, Sheik Hamad bin Nasser Al Thani, said his country was "well prepared and ready" to play host to the meeting. He and other Qatari officials declined to comment on specifics of security precautions.
Some opponents of trade trends complain that the meeting will be too quiet.
The small country has no political parties, unions or elected legislature and little history of public protest, and anti-globalization groups see the decision to hold the WTO session here as an effort to avoid a repeat of the violent protests at the last WTO ministerial meeting, in Seattle two years ago.
Qatar stopped issuing visas to visitors not connected with WTO until Nov. 15 to help keep out troublemakers.
The government has pledged not to stifle debate, as long as it is peaceful.
An official said Greenpeace had been given preliminary approval to demonstrate during the WTO meeting, but as of this past week final approval had not come. Greenpeace wants to anchor its flagship Rainbow Warrior off the coast as a platform for dissenting voices.
Qatar has a history of going its own way. It was the first Gulf state to establish ties with Israel, and the U.S. ally during the Gulf War was the first Arab nation after the conflict to send a foreign minister to Iraq.
It maintains good relations with all its Arab neighbors and Iran, but has refused to interfere with the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite news station whose reports and call-in shows have angered leaders from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to the United States.
While they may not have a parliament, Qataris did vote for municipal councils in 1999. Kuwait is the only other state in the region to have held any kind of elections - and Qatari women, unlike their Kuwaiti counterparts, were able to vote and run for office.
Like other oil states in the region, Qatar has transformed itself rapidly, growing from a pearl diving center into a major oil and natural gas producer. Its first school opened in 1952, the first hospital in 1959 and its university in 1977.
Qatar has one of the world's largest reserves of natural gas and its per capita income of $17,000 is one of the world's highest. Wealthy Qataris are used to bringing in foreign help - only about 200,000 of the 740,000 people living here are Qatari nationals; the rest are workers mostly from Asia and other Arab states.
In preparation for the WTO meeting, the government expanded the airport, laid new asphalt on major roads and planted flowers across the capital. But WTO delegates will find Doha a quiet city of no skyscrapers and little nightlife. Liquor is available, but only at bars and restaurants in the large hotels, which along with most government ministries are on the main thoroughfare along the shore.By:JABER AL-HARMI:
