By HELENE COOPER |THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials have developed an emergency-evacuation plan for U.S. delegates at next week's World Trade Organization meeting in Qatar, while lawmakers and executives have been canceling plans to attend.
Increasingly concerned about security at the WTO meeting, administration officials have discouraged business leaders and members of Congress from attending. Those who do go will be issued gas masks, antibiotics and two-way transistor radios upon arrival in Doha, Qatar, according to executives and congressional representatives who have participated in special security briefings on the meeting.
During those sessions, administration security officials outlined special evacuation plans that include airlifts to waiting U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf in the event the trade conference is attacked by terrorists.
Business and congressional representatives present at the security briefings said U.S. intelligence officials presented a slide show that included photographs of members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network who U.S. intelligence officials believe slipped into Qatar in the past month.
The result of the briefings is that lawmakers and business executives are calling off plans to attend the talks.
"We don't have anyone going," one Senate Finance Committee Republican staffer said. Indeed, neither Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Senate Democrat on trade, nor Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican, will be attending the meeting.
Members of the senators' staffs say they have other pressing business in Washington, including a possible vote on granting President Bush expanded powers to negotiate trade deals.
But many staffers say privately that security concerns are a big reason for the pullout by others who planned to attend. Indeed, of the 30 lawmakers initially scheduled to attend, Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.) was the only one still on the confirmed list Wednesday.
"I'm the ranking member [of the House Ways and Means Committee] on trade," Mr. Levin said. "I think, if at all possible, that a few of us should go."
But, he added, "We need another briefing next week" before making a final decision on whether he will go to Qatar.
Executives who were at the security briefings are among those deciding not to join the Qatar meeting as well. "I'm not going and I suggested to others that they not go either," said Geoffrey Gamble, chief international counsel at DuPont Co. After attending a security briefing in Washington Friday, Mr. Gamble e-mailed several executives and colleagues.
"My advice to all of you ... is that you not attend," Mr. Gamble said in the e-mail. Reached by phone, Mr. Gamble acknowledged sending the note but declined to elaborate.
The WTO chose Qatar for security reasons, figuring antiglobalization protesters who recently disrupted several similar meetings wouldn't disrupt one in the tightly controlled Persian Gulf emirate.
The U.S. delegation will include U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Commerce Secretary Don Evans.
Officials with the government of Qatar have said repeatedly that they will provide adequate security for the talks. They have resisted calls from WTO officials to rescind their invitation, which would give U.S. and WTO officials a graceful way out. Qatar's insistence on holding the meeting has put the U.S. and WTO in a box: WTO rules hold that Qatar would have to withdraw its invitation before officials can move the meeting somewhere else.
On one hand, many Bush national-security and foreign-policy officials argue that moving the meeting from Qatar would alienate the moderate Arab world that the U.S. is trying to woo in its campaign against terrorism. But they also worry that holding the meeting in what is essentially a war zone is asking for trouble.
Inside the Bush administration, officials have been wrangling with security concerns about the meeting since Sept. 11. Once Qatar refused to withdraw its invitation, the U.S. had to go, administration officials said.
"It wasn't our decision to make," said Mary Matalin, a counselor for Vice President Dick Cheney. "We have consistently said that if you host it, we'll be there."
Ms. Matalin denied a report in the Financial Times Wednesday that Mr. Cheney disregarded security concerns among top U.S. trade officials and committed the U.S. to attending the meeting 10 days ago. "Obviously, after 9-11, the whole world changed," she said. "But our position has not changed.":
