CANCUN, Mexico - Activists marched in the streets and stripped on the beaches in an attempt to derail a meeting of the World Trade Organization (news - web sites), at which representatives of 146 countries will try to increase global commerce without throwing millions out of work.
At a beach resort best known for turquoise surf and drunken U.S. college students, trade ministers huddled in conference rooms of five-star hotels in preparation for the meeting, which begins Wednesday.
Away from the hotel zone, thousands of anti-globalization activists from around the world set up camp, renting hammocks and swatting mosquitoes, and vowed to derail the meetings with protests and marches, as they did in Seattle in 1999.
Ministers at the meeting hope to close in on a binding treaty to make trade freer throughout most of the world. Under a WTO agreement, they are supposed to approve such a treaty by the end of next year.
Agriculture will likely be at the top of the Cancun agenda. Removing barriers to trade in agriculture is controversial, with developing nations demanding that rich countries like Japan, the United States and European nations end subsidies and tariffs designed to keep unprofitable farms afloat.
Several competing proposals are being pushed, including one from the United States and the European Union (news - web sites) that would create limited cuts in farm subsidies and another from a group of developing nations led by India and Brazil that would move toward eliminating the subsidies and opening the markets of rich countries to their farm products.
"We need, without any question, to make some progress on agriculture, because this is an issue of great importance to virtually all our members, and it is an issue on which progress in other areas hangs," WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.
Ministers also will consider whether to open their economies to more foreign investment — which some say will drive local producers out of business — and how to cut tariffs on industrial goods without shuttering factories and spurring unemployment.
Anti-globalization activists, farmers and labor rights promoters planned a week of protests, saying trade can also increase poverty, encourage mistreatment of workers and the environment and diminish cultural diversity.
Thousands of protesters already were in Cancun. Organizers said they hoped some 15,000 protesters would participate in the week of action against the WTO.
Although organizers have said they want to shut down the talks, they also pledged to avoid violence.
"We are not here to throw sticks or stones," said Rafael Alegria, international secretary of the farm group Via Campesina. "We are here to send a clear and ringing message: Take agriculture out of the WTO talks."
In one of the first protests Monday, 29 activists stripped off their clothes on a public beach and spelled out "No WTO" in the sand with their bodies.
Protesters will be kept away from the meeting venue. Only one road down the narrow peninsula leads to the meeting site, and police likely will block it if protesters try to march down it.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.