round
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 18:24:51 +1000
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GUARDIAN (London)Tuesday September 12, 2000
by Charlotte Denny and Patrick Barkham in Sydney
Swift descent into violence at the Crown casino
This was supposed to be three days of high-powered talks bringing
together in Melbourne some of biggest names of the Asian-Pacific
region. Instead, the World Economic Forum descended into Seattle-style
violence as anti-capitalist demonstrators clashed with police.
The success of demonstrations last November in scuppering vital trade
talks has given new life to the protesters - many of whom had rallied to
the anti-capitalist cause via websites which sprung up from the
demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle.
At least eight people were taken to hospital, including two police
officers, as protesters tried to prevent delegates entering the Crown
casino. Police reported that there were 1,500 demonstrators, although the
organisers claimed nearer 10,000.
Western Australia's right-wing prime minister, Richard Court, was
stranded in his vehicle for 20 minutes as protesters daubed it with
paint and let down the tyres, while Aboriginal activists "arrested" Mr
Court for supporting mandatory sentencing, which leads to the jailing of
people in Australia for petty crime.
Mr Court was forced to turn back after 50 baton-charging police
officers failed to dislodge the protesters' barricades. Chosen for its
secluded riverside site, the casino and other probable targets of
anti-globalisation feeling nearby had been heavily fortified against the
protesters.
What is worse for the organisers of the conference is that the
demonstrations slowed the WEF's registration programme and reduced the
number attending speeches and dinners on the first day of the
conference, as up to 200 delegates stayed in their hotel rooms.
Observers inside the building reported some of the events were only 50%
full.
BRAVE FACE
After Melbourne, the next stops on the travel itinerary of the global
summit protesters are the annual meetings of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund in Prague later this month. In public they are
putting a brave face on things, but in private the world's top trade
negotiators admit that the chances of a new round of trade
negotiations starting by the end of the year have shrunk to zero.
Diplomats from the 139 members of the World Trade Organisation had
hoped that the collapse of attempts to launch a new round last
December would prove a temporary setback. Now they are blaming the US
presidential elections for the delay, noting that any substantial
negotiations are impossible until the political make-up of the new
administration is known.
Next year, the world's most populous country, China, joins the Geneva
based body, which will tip the balance of power inside the
organisation away from the "Quad" - Japan, Canada, the US and the EU - who
have traditionally managed the global trading system and in the past
provided political impetus for new talks.
As a price of joining, China is opening large parts of its industry to
competition from foreign firms, which is expected to cause disruption
throughout its economy. Beijing will not be enthusiastic about
starting another set of talks to open further markets until it has
digested the fallout.
Privately, Quad policymakers admit that there is no political momentum for
a new round, and that the trade agenda is bogged down in Geneva
bureaucracy. Senior trade policymakers are now whispering that the
organisation's rambunctious New Zealand head, Mike Moore may be a lame duck
who will never see a trade round launched under his watch.
Indeed, time is running out for Moore who has only two more years at the
helm of the WTO. The political fudge which shoehorned him into the job
means he has a shorter than usual term, split with his rival, the Thai
finance minister, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi. Moore was the US's first
choice and Supachai made himself so unpopular with US negotiators
during the selection process, that some insiders doubt he will be able
to muster sufficient support from the world's biggest trading nation to
launch a round during his term of office which ends in 2005.
FRACTIOUS RELATIONS
Assuming Supachai's successor manages to get a trade round launched
with a year of taking office, past experience suggests it will take
five or six years to conclude. That suggests the earliest that the
next round of talks will be signed off will be around 2012-13 - a gap of
almost 20 years since the end of the Uruguay round and the longest gap
between trade rounds since the founding of the WTO's predecessor 50 years ago.
The strains of running the global trading system without fresh
negotiations are showing. Relations between the world's biggest
trading blocs, the EU and the US, are increasingly fractious, with the two
seemingly unable to solve arguments over hormone treated beef,
Caribbean bananas and Washington's billion dollar export subsidies to US
multinationals.
Any day now, the US will publish the latest list of EU goods it is
targeting for sanctions under long running disputes over bananas and
hormone treated beef. The US has been authorised to apply $300m of
sanctions by the WTO because the EU's ban on beef and import regime
favouring Caribbean bananas contravene global trading rules. But America's
decision to rotate the list it targets has been described by EU negotiators
as pouring fuel on the fire as it creates uncertainty for a greater group
of producers. Battles behind the scenes between the world's trading powers
are as heated as the fights outside their summits - and the protesters'
anti-trade agenda appears to be getting the upper hand.
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