SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Seeking to shift the international agenda from terrorism to poverty, delegations from 120 countries are converging on Brazil for talks aimed at giving developing countries a stronger role in the global economy.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which promotes trade to help poor countries, opens the 11th forum in its 40-year history Sunday amid a clamour from developing countries for trade liberalization to relieve Third World misery.
Although negotiations to spur free trade between developed countries and their poverty-stricken counterparts have advanced in recent years, critics say concrete movement has been blocked by the focus of the United States and its allies on crushing terrorism, and on the war in Iraq.
"It isn't that terrorism isn't a serious problem - it is," said UNCTAD Secretary General Rubens Ricupero. "But we shouldn't forget about themes like development, hunger and AIDS."
The weeklong meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city and its financial and industrial hub, will bring together leaders of Latin American countries, plus trade ministers and development officials from most other countries.
UNCTAD, which holds the event every four years, last gathered in Bangkok in 2000, shortly after the World Trade Organization's attempt to launch a new round of trade negotiations in Seattle collapsed amid anti-globalization protests.
Though UNCTAD does not have the power of the WTO to negotiate and enforce treaties, it covers many of the same issues. Participants hope the meeting will generate ideas to bring world trade talks out of near-paralysis.
That in turn could benefit the fight against terrorism, supporters say.
"Unfair trade rules keep millions of people in poverty, and we know that poverty and inequality exacerbate global insecurity and terrorism," said Katia Maia of Oxfam International.
Still, it is unclear what can be achieved while the American focus is on terrorism, said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
"The combination of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war has sucked the oxygen away from virtually all other issues on the agenda," he said.
"What trade talks and international economic talks require is a lot of high-profile attention from the presidents and prime ministers of the leading countries in the world."
Many observers doubt significant trade deals involving the United States have a chance of being sealed this year because they could complicate the re-election campaign of U.S. President George W. Bush.Associated Press:
