By Robert Evans
GENEVA, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Gulf state of Qatar was on Tuesday appointed host of the next ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November, which could see the launch of a new global trade round.
The decision, taken by consensus at a meeting of the WTO's ruling General Council, was welcomed by the European Union and the United States as well as by other Middle Eastern countries who are beginning to make their weight felt in the WTO.
Delegations to the currently 140-member body provisionally agreed the meeting, the WTO's fourth ministerial since it absorbed the old GATT in 1995, would be held on November 5-9.
Trade diplomats said a U.S. official told the Council he "hailed the courage" of Qatar -- a clear, if humourous, reference to the problems faced by the United States in hosting the last ministerial in Seattle in December 1999.
That meeting was marred by mass street protests and violence by movements opposing globalisation, while inside the discussions on launching new trade liberalisation talks collapsed in acrimony.
WTO Director-General Mike Moore, who hopes to see a round started before he leaves office in August next year, said he was "very pleased" over the approval of Qatar, which in Seattle had offered its capital Doha as next ministerial site.
Diplomats said EU ambassador Carlo Trojan told the Council he hoped that by the time they went to Qatar, all WTO countries would have agreed on starting a fresh round.
QATAR ONLY FORMAL CANDIDATE
Since Seattle, no other country had made a formal offer to be the host, although Chile said late last year that it was ready to step in if facilities in Qatar to accomodate the some 6,000 delegates, reporters and lobbyists were judged insufficient.
The Gulf state, a peninsula jutting into the sea off the east coast of Saudi Arabia, had originally offered only around 2,000 hotel rooms. But it has since pledged to also use villas and cruise ships, upping the number of room to 4,500.
Qatar has also said it would welcome "all WTO members" -- seen by diplomats as an assurance that Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with the Gulf state, would have no problems attending.
Some anti-WTO groups have voiced dismay at the prospect of Qatar hosting the meeting, saying the body was aiming to avoid protests by holding it in "an authoritarian state."
They point to the fact that Singapore, host to the first WTO ministerial in December 1996, barred some potential protesters.
But Qatar's veteran ambassador in Geneva, Fahad Awaid al-Thani, and officials of the trade body said the country's government had pledged it would abide by WTO rules on accreditation, and issuing visas.
Qatar will set up a special centre near the main conference venue for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on WTO issues, many of whom argue that freer world trade is making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Protesters from radical groups who reject any dialogue with the WTO staged daily, and sometimes violent, street protests at its second ministerial in Geneva in May 1998, and since Seattle anti-globalisers have targeted other key bodies.
Big demonstrations have marked meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and of the European Union, and militant groups say they will stop a meeting of the World Economic Forum starting in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday.:
