Agence France Presse
DOHA, Nov 9
World trade ministers meeting here are "cut off from reality" and might as well be convening on the moon, French farmer and anti-globalization hero Jose Bove declared Friday.
"It's clear they will be cut off from reality and will have a virtual discussion of the economy," Bove told AFP in Doha, where he will be representing the Peasant Confederation, a French non-governmental group, at a meeting of WTO trade ministers set to open later in the day. Bove criticized the World Trade Organization's decision to hold its conference in Qatar, a conservative Gulf state where political demonstrations are generally banned.
"If we were on the moon it would be the same, it's like an aircraft carrier in a sea of sand," he said.
Qatari authorities have said peaceful demonstrations would be allowed during the five-day meeting, called to forge an agenda for a new round of trade liberalization negotiations.
But the massive, militant street protests that disrupted the WTO's last big meeting, in Seattle in 1999, are not likely to occur here.
In the United States, labor and anti-globalization groups accused the WTO of selecting Doha in order to thwart public protests against its policies, which they charge serve the interests of big business at the expense of the poor and the environment.
Bove, a 48-year-old sheep farmer and activist, gained world recognition when he ransacked a partially built McDonald's restaurant in southern France in 1999.
Fresh from that action, Bove in December that year travelled to Seattle, Washington where he joined tens of thousands of like-minded demonstrators seeking reforms to the world trading system.
He has since then become a much-travelled militant, although he only got his visa for Qatar at the last minute -- thanks in large part to the intervention of French authorities.:
