Hoping to shift the international agenda from terrorism to easing poverty, delegations from 120 nations are converging on Brazil for talks aimed at giving developing countries a stronger role in the global economy.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which promotes trade to help poor countries, opens its 11th forum in its 40-year history Sunday amid a clamor from developing countries for trade liberalization to relieve Third World misery.
Negotiations to spur free trade between developed countries and their poverty-stricken counterparts have advanced in recent years, but critics say concrete movement has been blocked by the focus of the United States and its allies on crushing terrorism and on fighting the war in Iraq.
"It isn't that terrorism isn't a serious problem, it is," said UNCTAD Secretary General Rubens Ricupero. "But we shouldn't forget about themes like development, hunger and AIDS."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan flew from New York on Friday night to attend the conference and speak at Monday's opening session.
Security in Brazil's largest city was tight Friday, with more than 2,000 police deployed near the conference site. Soldiers carrying semiautomatic weapons were posted at key intersections and on highway overpasses up to several kilometers (miles) away from the site, and military helicopters buzzed overhead.
The weeklong meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil's hub of industry and finance, will bring together leaders of Latin American countries, plus trade ministers and development officials from most other countries.
Many representatives of the world's developing nations are expected to start meeting on Saturday, a day before the conference begins, in an effort to ease their own mutual trade barriers.
The so-called Group of 77 developing nations - there are actually 132 member nations - will be trying to eliminate tariffs and other trade impediments among themselves in a move to take a greater share of global trade.
Trade between India and Brazil, for example, could increase 16 times its current level with "better mutual understanding and a reduction of tariffs" between the two countries, Ricupero said.
"The big question these countries have not resolved is: 'Are they willing to be on the side of opening up their own markets?"' said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. "They are kind of paralyzed on that issue, but if they come together with some concrete suggestions they will have quite a voice."
UNCTAD, which holds the event every four years, last gathered in Bangkok in 2000 just months after the World Trade Organization's attempt to launch a new round of trade negotiations in Seattle collapsed amid violent anti-globalization street protests.
Though UNCTAD does not have the power of the WTO to negotiate and enforce treaties, the two groups cover many of the same issues. Participants hope the meeting will generate ideas for reviving world trade talks.
That in turn could actually benefit the fight against terrorism, supporters say.
"Unfair trade rules keep millions of people in poverty, and we know that poverty and inequality exacerbate global insecurity and terrorism," said Katia Maia of the relief agency Oxfam International.
Still, it is unclear what can be achieved while the Bush administration's focus is on terrorism, Hufbauer said.
"The combination of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war has sucked the oxygen away from virtually all other issues on the agenda," he said. "What trade talks and international economic talks require is a lot of high profile attention from the presidents and prime ministers of the leading countries in the world."
Trade negotiators attending the UNCTAD forum will also hold meetings on the sidelines of the event.
Negotiators from the European Union and four South American nations - Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay - are expected to advance their talks on creating a free trade zone by October.
And U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is expected to meet with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim after Brazil hosts a meeting of the so-called G20 group of developing nations. They are pushing to reach a deal by July to relaunch the stalled Doha round of WTO trade talks aimed at slashing subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to global commerce.
Global trade relations were chilled by the collapse last September of the 147-member organization's last formal ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
But they began to thaw last month after the European Union agreed in principle to scrap export subsidies on farm produce - blamed for hurting producers in poor countries - and dropped controversial demands for new global rules on investment, competition and government procurement.
The United States has already signaled readiness to scrap its own much smaller export subsidies and trade-distorting export credits. But both Washington and Brussels have stressed that the concessions are conditional on poorer countries agreeing to open their own markets.
Still, many observers doubt significant trade deals involving the United States have a chance of being sealed this year because agreements could complicate the re-election campaign of U.S. President George W. Bush.Associated Press:
