Brazil's president Monday called for a worldwide effort to assist developing nations' economies, saying they were incapable of the "spontaneous" growth experienced in wealthier nations.
Speaking at the official opening of the 11th U.N. Conference on Trade and Development -- meeting this year in Brazil's industrial capital Sao Paulo -- President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that the model of economic development in poor nations "does not occur automatically, nor will it result in the spontaneous generation of market forces."
Organized every four years, the UNCTAD assembles trade representatives from 180 countries.
In his opening speech at the talks, Lula claimed that in the last five years 55 developing nations have shown less than 2 percent economic growth per year.
His answer to stunted growth and stagnant economies was the creation of a global initiative among poor nations that the president compared to the Marshall plan instituted by the United States after World War II that helped rebuild a war-ravaged Europe.
First off, the president proposed that developing nations negotiate the reduction of trade barriers and tariffs among themselves.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who attended Monday's session, applauded the Lula initiative and condemned developed nations for standing in the way of tariff reductions that would help poorer states to grow and enter new markets.
Brazil has in recent years battled with both the United States and the EU over tariffs, and in April it made history when the World Trade Organization sided with its complaint that U.S. subsidies for cotton farmers unfairly increased production and lowered world cotton prices, making it impossible for Brazilian cotton growers to compete.
It was the first time a developing nation had registered and won a complaint in the WTO against an economic powerhouse.
Lula's efforts Monday to rally developing nations to his agenda is not the first time that Brazil has played a leading role in trying to level the economic playing field shared by wealthy and developing nations, calling on the latter to work together to improve their shared plight.
During trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, in November, Brazil led a group of developing nations to protest against what they deemed unfair trade restrictions by the United States and other wealthy nations, prompting the meetings to collapse.
Since assuming office in January 2003, Lula has taken his message of economic fair play on the road to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and around the globe, meeting with world leaders from numerous developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, trying to forge stronger trade ties.
Lula's professed vision for Brazil -- and the rest of the world's poorer nations it seems -- is the creation of alternative trade relations that do not include the United States and reduce dependency on wealthy countries.
Meanwhile, in other news from Monday's UNCTAD meeting, Cuban leader Fidel Castro sent a letter to the meeting criticizing the last 25 years of globalization. According to Castro it is "impossible to measure" all the losses suffered by developing countries due to economic and social globalization.
He also said it was impossible for developing nations to compete on the same technological level as the world's wealthy countries when intellectual property rights are protected. Castro's letter also asserts 800 million people are starving in the world, up from 500 million 25 years ago.
Conspicuously absent from Monday's talks was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who reportedly cancelled his trip to the talks at the last minute to campaign ahead of an August election.
On Aug. 15, Chavez faces a referendum vote on his presidency, which isn't set to end until 2006. The Venezuelan leader has come under increasing pressure from opposition groups -- which lobbied for and won the right to a referendum vote -- which claim his authoritarian leftist policies are destroying the country.United Press International:
