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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 December 1999 Issue No. 459 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 December 1999 Issue No. 459
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Following a marathon of intensive talks in Seattle on Friday, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Meeting ended in chaos and disarray, failing to reach a consensus among its 135-nation membership. Attempting a last-ditch show of unwarranted optimism, the United States' trade representative and chair of the talks, Charlene Barshefsky maintained that creative new means would have to be devised to finish the job.
Fiasco in Seattle By Thomas Gurguisian and Faiza Rady
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Debate Features Profile Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Most observers blasted the US for stonewalling the agricultural issues with the Europeans, and being inflexible on labour standards with developing countries like Egypt, Pakistan and India. Most delegates from the South were critical of being unduly pressured and ultimately marginalised by powerful US political arm-twisting.
Assessing the conference's failure, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa slammed the talks, saying that the "big powers attempted to impose certain trade polices on the developing countries in a way that could only lead to wide economic destruction in the Third World".
While the high-level northern globalisation delegation pushed for open markets and free trade for their own industries, ministers from the South angrily denounced the North for imposing disguised forms of protectionism against products from the South and called for more equitable trade conditions and equal access to EU and US markets.
Meanwhile, in scenes reminiscent of the militant anti-Vietnam War rallies, tens of thousands of international and American demonstrators battled the police and the US National Guard on the streets of Seattle. Vehement marchers were ultimately subjected to severe police brutality. Law-enforcers sprayed protesters with tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets, arresting hundreds of activists and denying them access to legal counsel. The marchers railed against the WTO as the major agency promoting global economic neo-liberalism that has dismantled national industries, wiped out millions of jobs worldwide, dramatically exacerbated levels of global poverty and contributed to the widescale destruction of the environment.
On Thursday, demonstrators blocked the delegations' access to the convention centre, where the ministerial meetings were scheduled, resulting in the cancellation of the opening ceremony. When the ministers finally met following a five-hour delay, echoes of the street fury still reached the ministerial convention halls.
Following US President Bill Clinton's declaration that the WTO would use sanctions to enforce unified global labour standards, delegates from southern nations like India, Pakistan and Egypt responded with anger and outrage -- accusing the US of marginalising and sidelining the main concerns of the South. "They have been treating us like animals, keeping us out in the cold and telling us nothing," fumed Ambassador and veteran Egyptian trade negotiator Munir Zahran.
Egyptian Minister of Economy Youssef Boutros Ghali strongly criticised the threat of sanctions. "If you start using trade as a lever to implement non-trade related issues, that will be the end of the multilateral trading system. Maybe not this year, but in 10 to 15 years," said Ghali.
Globalisation without participation was one of the issues raised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), whose presence and role were crucial in shaping the voices on the streets of Seattle. The major question at the beginning of the ministerial meetings was whether Seattle was going to be a "new round" or a "turn around". "Given the way things were going, if there was going to be an agenda, it would not be to the advantage of developing countries," Tetteh Hormeku, a Ghanaian representative of the African Secretariat of Third World Network (TWN), a Malaysian-based NGO, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The talks were described by some delegates as "disorganised", while others defined them as a real "circus". When the talks reached a critical stage, Keith Rockwell, the WTO spokesman, tried to strike a note of optimism by vaguely alluding to some "progress" being achieved. However, by early Friday it was clear that the confrontations had reached a real impasse; by Friday night the talks had totally collapsed. "The decision was consciously taken to stop these proceedings and postpone them until we figure out a way to combine transparency with efficiency," Youssef Boutros Ghali told the Weekly.
Martin Khor, director of TWN, denounced the WTO conference in the strongest terms, describing Seattle as a "scandal". "Developing countries that form more than two-thirds of the membership of the WTO are being coerced and stampeded by the major powers -- especially the host country, the US -- to agree to a declaration which they were given very little opportunity to draft or to consider," explained Khor.
A tough job awaits Mike Moore, the WTO director-general. Ministers of trade from member states of the OAU/AEC (Organisation of African Unity/African Economic Community) blasted the secrecy and closed-door character of the negotiations. EU delegates concurred with their African counterparts. "The whole process, how it works, is at least questionable," Gregor Kreuzhaber, EU spokesman on agricultural issues, told the Weekly. "It is neither transparent nor efficient. So we have to think about procedures which will meet these objectives in a better way."
Presumably, foreseeing a WTO turnaround, Ghali argued that this is not the end of the WTO. "On the contrary," he said, "this is the beginning of the WTO." The Egyptian economy minister described Seattle as representing a "catharsis" for the WTO. "This is an organisation that deals with very hefty, important matters on a one country, one vote basis. This is unique among international economic organisations and it is something we want to preserve. And we want to add to it a system that respects transparency with a minimum of inefficiency," said Ghali.
Many analysts believe that the WTO needs to be reassessed and rehauled. There was a near consensus among the participants about the dire need for reform. "Times have changed, developing countries do play a role, and they have to play a role in the WTO process, because this is a democratic process," commented Kreuzhaber.
Addressing the demand for equal power-sharing and the necessity to establish a more equitable distribution of global resources between rich and poor nations under the auspices of the WTO, Ghali told Al-Ahram Weekly: "You will not see anymore the sort of closed caucus, which leads to agreements that apply to all nations [in total disregard of their economic development]. If there is an agreement that is going to be applied to everybody, everybody is going to be involved in its drafting."
In this context, and given the demand for democratic power-sharing, transparency and the vital need to establish more equitable terms of trade for the South, the voice of the Seattle streets strongly reverberated through the WTO conference halls.
Additional reporting by Dina Ezzat
