Agence France Presse | November 8, 2001 | NATHANIEL HARRISON
DOHA - Trade ministers, facing a terrorism-driven plunge in the global economy, open a critical meeting here Friday to boost world trade amid ominous policy disputes and security fears after a man opened fire on a US military base.
Ministers from the 142-member World Trade Organization will spend five days in the sweltering Qatari capital in a fresh bid to forge an agenda for a new round of multilateral talks to lower barriers to global trade.
But security concerns intensified Wednesday when an assailant, a Qatari armed with a Kalashnikov, fired on a US base south of Doha in what Qatari officials said was an isolated incident.
The man was killed when guards at the base returned fire, the interior ministry said. With two days to go before the opening of the conference, which takes place in a luxury hotel on the shores of the Gulf, Qatari authorities were also scrambling to meet the technological and security challenges of hosting a gathering expected to draw 4,500 official delegates, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations.
Qatar came close to losing its chance to stage the conference after the suicide attacks in the United States September 11.
WTO members doubted the wisdom of holding the meeting here at a time when the United States was attacking Afghanistan, which like Qatar is a conservative Muslim state.
But bouyed by security assurances from Qatari authorities and under pressure, according to some press accounts, from US Vice President Dick Cheney, the WTO agreed to stick with Doha.
Nonetheless, some of the key players here -- notably the United States and Japan -- have scaled back their delegations. Security is evident but hardly rigorous, although tougher measures were expected to be in place by Friday.
Many of the delegates gathering in Doha harbor bitter memories of their last bid to agree on a new trade liberalization agenda in December 1999.
Meeting in Seattle, on the US west coast, ministers were rattled by the presence of some 40,000 anti-globalization militants but also failed to overcome deep differences among themselves.
By all accounts those gaps remain as acute as ever, despite the fact that trade is frequently cited as an antidote to an ominous global economic downturn exacerbated by fears of new terrorist strikes on Western targets.
"The circumstances are more dire," Richard Fisher, a former US trade official, told a recent seminar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"The need for progress on trade has been emphasized by ... these cascading financial markets and the tremendous economic turmoil around the world.
"But the reality of the situation is that we're back to where we were in Seattle in 1999."
Mike Moore, the WTO director general, warned that failure would send a risky signal of division at a time when the world's major economies were sliding into recession.
"At a time when global cooperation is as important as it has ever been, a failure to improve one of the most important pillars of the international architecture would be not only unfortunate but dangerous," he said in an introductory statement obtained by AFP.
Similar warnings have come in recent days from officials in the United States, Japan, the European Union and developing countries.
In the United States, Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has also publicly evoked the possibility that that the Doha meeting -- and the campaign to boost trade on global rather than regional levels -- could founder.
"If the WTO falters," he said, "the United States will continue to pursue trade liberalization, turning to regional and country-by-country alternatives".
Just as they were in Seattle, the United States and the European Union are at loggerheads over government subsidies to help farmers export their output.
Washington and its allies in a bloc known as the Cairns Group insist that the new round lead to the elimination of such assistance, an outcome vigorously rejected by the EU.
The United States for its part is resisting the inclusion in a new round of debate on its anti-dumping policies, under which punitive duties have been slapped on imports deemed to have entered the US market at unfairly low prices.
That practice has been bitterly denounced by Japan and South Korea, both of which want to see the issue on any future trade liberalization agenda.
Developinng countries are also approaching Doha dissatisfied with a draft ministerial statement they say falls far short of meeting their needs.
Poor nations in particular resent being pressured to make new free trade commitments when they say they have yet to taste the fruits of previous multilateral accords.
They are pressing for greater access to markets in the industrialized world and -- in opposition to the United States and Switzerland -- are seeking the right to override WTO-approved patent protections to produce cheap generic drugs to combat health crises such as AIDS.
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