While ministers from the World Trade Organization's 132
member nations talk out their differences, a worldwide coalition
against economic globalization will take to the streets outside
in an attempt to disrupt the three-day conference.
WTO officials said Tuesday Clinton would arrive May 18 to
make a speech that evening to trade ministers and other leaders
who will be gathering for a session the next day.
Coming from a weekend summit of the world's seven leading
industrial powers (the G7) and Russia in Birmingham, England,
and a U.S.-European Union summit in London Monday morning, he
will leave for Washington immediately after his speech.
Castro, whose country is at fierce odds with Washington over
the four-decade U.S. embargo on his communist-ruled island, is
thought unlikely to meet Clinton -- saving his fire for a
possible address to the ministers the following day.
He will speak Thursday to the annual assembly of the United
Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva -- just hours
before First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is due to receive a
prize at a special ceremony there.
The WTO gathering is a two-in-one affair -- a closed-door
ministerial session May 18 and 20 wrapped around May 19
celebrations marking the 50 years since the founding of the old
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
GATT, absorbed by the WTO in 1995, is widely credited with
being the motor behind the boom in world trade -- and growth in
global prosperity -- over the last five decades through the
eight liberalization rounds it has overseen.
Both the United States and Cuba were founder members, and a
charter for GATT to become a formal "International Trade
Organization (ITO)'' -- which never came into being -- was
agreed among 23 countries in Havana in March 1948.
Despite their ideological antagonism, both the United States
and Cuba today accept the value of the GATT and the WTO as
providing a forum for negotiations and framework of rules which
nations must observe in their trading relations.
But Castro, still seeing himself as a champion of poorer
countries and deprived peoples, wants the trade body to focus
more on underdevelopment and ensuring that emerging economies
get real access for their goods in Western markets.
These issues are likely to be at the center of the debate
among the ministers, with most developing countries arguing that
the attention of the WTO over the coming years should be on
ensuring that what has already been agreed is implemented.
They argue that accords during the 1986-93 Uruguay Round
ranging from lower goods tariffs and a phase-out of old limits
on textile trade to new rules for services, farm trade and
intellectual property are enough for them to absorb for years.
Countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh especially
argue that the West is still holding back on opening up to their
vital clothing and textile exports.
But big powers want to push ahead -- either in the form of a
new round as sought by the European Union or in new sectoral
talks as preferred by the United States -- into some new areas
like investment, competition and electronic commerce.
The opponents of globalization and the WTO want none of
this, arguing that the process puts power increasingly into the
hands of "capitalist'' transnational companies who exploit
workers in the name of profit.
"From the slave trade of earlier centuries to the imperial
colonization of peoples, lands and cultures....capitalist
accumulation has always fed on the blood and tears of the
peoples of the world,'' a statement issued in Geneva said.
Their umbrella group, People's Global Action (PGA),
promises "non-violent civil disobedience against the WTO
summit'' including sending gagged protesters with their arms
tied to try to enter the WTO and stop the conference.
© 1998 Reuters Ltd.