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Anti-globalisers voice outrage over WTO plan

Anti-globalisation groups voiced outrage on Tuesday at proposals for talks on international trade barriers to be presented at a key World Trade Organisation conference in Qatar next week.

In a joint statement the groups -- which argue integration of the world economy benefits multinational corporations but makes the poor poorer -- said the meeting, which is aimed at launching a new trade round, could collapse if the project was not dropped.

Trade liberalisation talks have been the focus of protests by a broad range of non-governmental organisations and anti-establishment groups since the last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999 failed to launch a trade round and collapsed amid violent riots.

If agreed, the round would aim to slash tariffs on industrial goods, open WTO member countries' markets wider for services like banking, tourism and telecommunications, and cut back farm subsidies in the European Union and the United States.

New drafts of texts for declarations to be made by ministers at the end of the November 9-13 gathering in Doha were 'met with outrage by civil society', declared the statement that was delivered to trade reporters in Geneva.

It said the drafts, drawn up by WTO General Council chairman and Hong Kong ambassador Stuart Harbinson had been received with 'disbelief and frustration' by the developing countries.

The draft 'presumes a consensus on a future WTO agenda which does not exist', the groups said.

"Non-governmental organisations from around the world call on their governments to denounce this text as illegitimate and to oppose it being moved forward for use at the Doha Ministerial," they said.

The groups included the US group Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth-International, based in Brussels, Via Campesina-International, which links peasant groups and Public Service International, grouping civil servant bodies.

Developing countries are expected to criticise the Harbinson texts when the WTO General Council meets on Wednesday.

EU officials are insisting a declaration must provide for talks aimed eventually at linking environmental protection to trade rules -- a stance rejected by most poorer countries.

Many groups in richer countries back developing country assertions that linking environmental and labour standards to trade rules is a ploy by the big powers -- mainly the United States and the EU -- to protect their domestic producers against imports of goods produced more cheaply.

While anti-globalisation protests have been joined by European farmers who fear a loss of subsidies under any new WTO rule, many developing country civil society groups back their governments' demands for an end to such subsidies in the West.

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