WTO - Latest Ploy
Posted 2nd April 2001

Thai academics and pressure groups Monday criticised a conference of top Asian government officials planned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a ploy to win support for a new trade round. The WTO could use the meeting in the northern city of Chiang Mai to "soften up" Asian nations ahead of the next WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar later this year, the activist and rights organisations said. "This is typical WTO modus operandi: use every key inter-governmental meeting to get governments into line behind a new trade round," said Walden Bello, executive director of the thinktank Focus on the Global South.

The conference, called the WTO Regional Seminar on Trade and Environment for Developing and Least Developed Countries in Asia, is scheduled to take place on March 27 and 28. It will be followed by a two-day meeting between the WTO and civil society organizations, which the Bangkok-based activists described as a cynical bid to sideline opposition while appearing to encourage debate. Some academics and non-governmental organizations listed as participants in the March 29-30 meeting said at a press conference here that they had not even been notified about the talks and would stay away in protest. "My name and Mr. Srisuwan's name were listed as a participants even though we were never informed," Bello said, referring to fellow panelist Srisuwan Kuankachorn of the Project on Ecological Recovery. "I will not attend this meeting because it would legitimize the WTO by using civil society institutions."

The activists said the meeting was intended to manipulate Asian governments into supporting another round of trade at the Fourth WTO Ministerial meeting in Qatar in November. "The WTO knows that even if the governments fall into line in Chiang Mai, civil society opposition in their countries could still push them off the bandwagon," said Bello, a leading anti-globalisation campaigner. "Thus we have a trade and environment seminar for civil society organizations, also to be held in Chiang Mai," he said. Other activists decried the increasing role of multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank in the region. "This development direction will push Thailand to complete ecological destruction," Srisuwan said. The last WTO trade talks in Seattle in December 1999 were scuttled when WTO ministers were unable to even agree on an agenda for a new cycle of talks. Thailand's Supachai Panitchpakdi, due to replace Mike Moore of New Zealand as WTO director general in 2002, has said he hopes a new round of global trade liberalization talks will be under way by the time he takes office. But that hope was dashed in Seattle in December 1999, when WTO ministers were unable to even agree on an agenda for a new cycle of talks.