Walden Bello | BusinessWorld
Doha -- About 100 NGO delegates staged an anti-World Trade Organization demonstration on Friday, immediately before the opening of the trade body's fourth ministerial session in Doha, Qatar. Standing on both sides of the entrance to the huge Al Dafna Hall at the Sheraton Hotel, the protesters, with tape on their mouths, held up signs saying "No Voice at the WTO," calling attention to the lack of democracy, transparency and civil society input into the organization's decision-making processes.
After over 5,000 delegates had filed in, the demonstrators started chanting "What do we want? Democracy!" An effort by Jose Bove, the French anti-McDonalds activist, to lead the demonstrators into the hall was at first repelled by Qatari security forces. A few moments later, however, the demonstrators were allowed in. Fulfilling a pledge made at an open session earlier in the day by Crown Prince Sheik Jassim bin Hamad, security forces did not arrest or detain any of the activists. Massive security preparations have turned Doha, a city of over 600,000, into a high security zone, to the consternation of ordinary Qataris, many of whom claim that the United States is exaggerating the dangers of holding the conference in the Gulf city. The security arrangements have isolated the conference site and are making transportation to and from hotels an exercise in resourcefulness for many delegates. An armed attack by an allegedly deranged Qatari gunman on a munitions base on the outskirts of Doha, used by the United States, earlier in the week has heightened the tension. Even before that incident, the office of the US Trade Representative had moved to gather representatives of US NGOs from their separate lodgings to join the US official delegation at the Ritz Carlton, which has been converted into an armed camp, with logistical connections to US warships waiting in the Gulf for possible evacuation of American delegates. There is more than enough space in the hotel, since the number of people in the official US delegation has shrunk from about 300 to 50.
So paranoid is the US security force at the Ritz Carlton that it prevented Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland-based think tank Food First, from riding on the same bus from the hotel to the conference site after it discovered that she is an Indian citizen. She said that it also refused to give her access to US official briefings or provide her with a security phone and gas mask, which it was distributing to other members of the American entourage.
The dramatic shrinkage in the number of official delegates is not confined to the US delegation. The Canadian delegation, usually one of the biggest, is down to 50. Says Maude Barlow, a noted critic of her government's trade policies: "People were suddenly all getting sick or disabled at the last minute, and to try to cover the cost of the government plane, they even invited me for the ride to Qatar."
Intense backroom discussions marked the first two days of the WTO meeting. Developing countries feel that the ministerial draft circulated by director general Michael Moore and Stuart Harbinson, chairperson of the General Council, is unbalanced and does not reflect their opinions and interest. Murasoli Maran, India's minister of Trade and Industry, stated that the ministerial was " a mere formality and we are being coerced against our will."
The US, the European Union and other developed countries want to launch a new round of trade negotiations that would include addressing the "new issues" of investment, government procurement, competition policy and trade facilitation. The developing countries want the ministerial to focus mainly on implementation matters related to the previous round, the Uruguay Round. "This is simply a matter of capacity. With all the outstanding problems of implementation, developing countries simply cannot take on new commitments to liberalize now," said Minister of Industry and Trade Iddi Samba from Tanzania.
Given the standoff between developed and developing countries, the fate of the Fourth Ministerial Session of the WTO hangs in the balance.Walden Bello:
