WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (AFP) - Activists on Thursday marked the first anniversary of huge protests in Seattle, Washington, which shocked a WTO ministerial conference and galvanized a worldwide movement against economic globalization.
Demonstrations and teach-ins were planned in Seattle to celebrate what militants claim was a clear victory over the World Trade Organization and its corporate-driven regulations, which they say harm the poor and degrade the environment.
Here in the US capital, activists were scheduled to gather outside the offices of the International Monetary Fund to stage a "counter-reception" as local officials and IMF dignitaries inaugurated a new facility.
The IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank, have also been targeted by foes of globalization in the aftermath of Seattle, where tens of thousands of human-rights, environmental and trade union activists laid siege to a WTO ministerial meeting from November 30 to December 3 last year.
The size and militancy of the protests stunned US and Seattle authorities and unnerved delegates to the long-awaited gathering, which had been called to forge an agenda for a new round of trade liberalization talks that they hoped would materialize this year.
The meeting eventually collapsed -- for reasons, organizers insisted, that had nothing to do with the violent street demonstrations.
In their heavily guarded convention center, ministers did indeed squabble among themselves, unable to set aside national priorities in order to reach consensus on a new trade agenda.
Since Seattle, WTO members have yet to iron out their differences. Pascal Lamy, European Union trade commissioner, on Monday acknowledged that a fresh bid to hold a new trade round was not on the horizon.
"I also note that the necessary political energy for such a project of globalization has diminished," he said.
While the WTO remains in apparent disarray, the antiglobalization drive has gathered steam, activists say.
"In the past year, the Seattle Coalition has grown here and abroad, with protests and events occurring wherever the corporate globalization agenda is promoted," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a body founded by Ralph Nader.
"The joy of it is there is no team of roving organizers," she said. "Each of the protests ... comes from informed, activated local residents."
At another, larger IMF-World Bank gathering in Prague last September, some 12,000 people turned out to protest the policies of the two institutions.
Similar demonstrations have been held since Seattle in Geneva, London, Adelaide, Cincinnati and elsewhere.
Four months after Seattle, an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 protesters poured into the streets of Washington to denounce the annual April meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. Under heavy police protection, delegates had to be bused in to their meetings at the crack of dawn to avoid demonstrators.
Diplomatic sources in the Gulf state of Qatar said last month that authorities there had withdrawn their offer to host the next WTO ministerial meeting at the end of 2001. While the reason given was a lack of hotel space during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, anti-WTO activists claimed the move as another triumph.
Rejecting arguments from the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO that globalization -- the unfettered flow of trade and capital across national borders -- reduces poverty and improves living standards, opponents maintain that such policies place corporate profits ahead of social and environmental needs.
Speaking of the new building the IMF plans to dedicate later Thursday, Njoki Njoroge Njehu of the anti-IMF "50 Years Is Enough Network" said: "If the IMF tried to put a 'center' in Port-au-Prince or Lusaka, the people would be there right away to ask when they will start listening to the people who live under their policies.
"When, for example, will they stop using the ideology of 'free markets' to impose 'user fees' on poor peoples' access to such basic public services as education, health care and water?":
