Agence France Presse | Aug. 11, 2003
Calls by French anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove for widescale protests to derail next month's WTO conference in Mexico would harm the "interests of the poor and downtrodden", a WTO spokesman said on Monday, adding that the body could never condone violence.
It would only harm people in developing countries if ministers at the September meeting in Cancun were prevented from helping poor countries gain wider access to markets in the developed world, Keith Rockwell, spokesman of the World Trade Organisation, said.
"Ministers agreed in Doha (Qatar) that the rules of this organisation are not sufficient to deal with the problems of developing countries," he said. "The point of these negotiations is to try to address these problems," he added.
The Geneva-based WTO's 146 members are to meet in the Mexican resort of Cancun from September 10-14 to review progress in the so-called Doha Development round of trade liberalisation talks.
The round, launched in the Qatari capital in November 2001, aimed to place development issues at the heart of fresh, three-year negotiations to further tear down barriers to global trade.
Bove, a militant sheep farmer, on Sunday called for the protests at the end of a three-day rally in southern France that drew, police say, at least 150,000 people to the Larzac 2003 festival.
"We must mobilize to make sure the Cancun summit is a failure, to put the 146 member governments under citizen's arrest so they can't sign an agreement in Cancun," Bove said.
But Rockwell responded Monday that he did not think any attempts to prevent ministers from meeting to tackle problems, such as improving market access and trade distorting subsidies, was "the best approach".
"If people come to express their point of view about things ... I think that's okay," he said, before adding: "To do it in a violent way or way that impinges on the rights of others is not acceptable".Agence France Presse:
