By Chris Johnson
BANGKOK, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A global summit in Bangkok this week will try to help the poor take advantage of the spread of free trade that some developing countries fear only benefits the rich, officials said on Friday.
Rubens Ricupero, secretary general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said the meeting should bridge the gap between the big powers, the developing world and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over trade policy.
The UNCTAD meeting, from February 12 to 19, was a forum for the developing world and would in some ways be the opposite of the gathering of global business and political leaders, held annually in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of January.
"We are not rivals of Davos," Ricupero told a news conference. "In fact, we are in some sort of way the 'Anti-Davos' in the sense that we are an organisation that is very close to the poor, the deprived and the marginalised."
"If we are worthy of giving a voice to those who do not have a voice, we are honoured by this," he said.
Set up in 1964 to promote development through trade, UNCTAD's role has changed in recent years with the founding of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) -- the forum for all negotiations and rule-setting on tariffs and trade.
Critics of "globalisation" -- the creation of single world markets with global rules -- say UNCTAD has been weakened by the emergence of the WTO and argue developing countries have lost an important advocate on the world stage.
Many NGOs oppose the WTO -- a stance that exploded into violence on the streets of Seattle during the trade body's ministerial meeting there last December.
But governments of most of the 190 nations in UNCTAD see the agency as complementary to the 135-member WTO, whose rules they see as protecting them against strong-arm tactics by the major trading powers -- the United States and the European Union.
GLOBALISATION "INEVITABLE"
"I see great compatibility and complementarity between organisations like the WTO and UNCTAD," Thai Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi told a news conference.
He said globalisation was "inevitable" but nations had the chance to influence how it happened and what rules were adopted.
Ricupero said UNCTAD would be a forum to get stalled global free trade talks moving after the WTO's attempts to launch a new "Millennium Round" of world trade talks collapsed amid differences between the U.S. and the EU.
"I see some other dimensions in the conference...how to help in the healing process after Seattle, particularly from the perspective of developing countries," he told Reuters.
WTO Director General Mike Moore will take part in the UNCTAD summit. Hosts Thailand and UNCTAD have offered to foster talks on free trade along the sidelines of the meeting.
Ricupero, a former Brazilian finance minister and trade negotiator, said Moore was due to present a mini-package of trade proposals for developing nations to consider in the hope of launching new trade talks that could be beneficial to them.
He said developing nations were facing financial and other problems in implementing some free trade agreements.
More than 3,000 delegates from 190 countries will attend the 10th assembly of the UNCTAD, founded in 1964 to promote the interests of poorer countries.
Key participants include outgoing International Monetary Fund head Michel Camdessus, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and the heads of governments of some key Southeast Asian and African nations.
The United States, a full member of UNCTAD, and the EU, only an observer, are sending only relatively low-level officials.
Asked if he was disappointed with this, Ricupero said UNCTAD was not interested in "a sort of beauty contest on who or not is coming to our meeting."
Ricupero said he would strive to ensure that NGOs and activists, some of whom were behind demonstrations in Seattle, were included in the free trade talks process.
Thai activists with political and ideological differences with the Thai government have vowed to break through police barricades near the conference venue to express their views.
Police have told activists to congregate at a park some distance away from the summit venue, but they have refused.:
