OTTAWA - Anti-globalization demonstrators vowing to disrupt a meeting of world trade ministers next week in Montreal are contributing to misery and death in the Third World, Pierre Pettigrew, the Minister for International Trade, said yesterday.
The harsh denunciation of the disruptive tactics of some protesters came as about 25 trade ministers from countries as disparate as the United States and Lesotho prepared to arrive for three days of meetings starting Monday. The ministers are trying to jump-start talks on liberalizing trade that started two years ago in Doha, Qatar, but have not got far since.
Protesters should realize that if they succeed in stopping the meeting good work will be blocked, Mr. Pettigrew said. He pointed to efforts by governments to negotiate lower farm subsidies in rich countries, which would raise world commodity prices, and to achieve a deal to allow developing countries to get cheaper pharmaceuticals to combat AIDS.
"If they want to stop us, fine. Good luck. They should bear the responsibility that what they're really trying to do is screw the African cotton farmers and the African HIV victims as well," he told a Montreal news conference.
Mr. Pettigrew went further, virtually waving a red flag at protesters who say international bodies such as the World Trade Organization wield too much power already.
"We need a WTO that is more powerful, more able to impose its decisions," he said. Many WTO rulings on unfair trade practices are ignored by countries or appealed endlessly.
Opponents of globalization reacted angrily to the comments.
"The minister has been involved in this process for a long time and the results in getting medicine to people with AIDS and access to markets for farmers in the Third World have been absolutely zero," said Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. "They're not trying to stop that and Mr. Pettigrew knows this full well. The protesters have no faith in the process and the methods the Canadian government has employed to date."
Violent protests turned the last large-scale trade meeting in Canada, the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, into an armed camp where the smell of tear gas hung in the air for days.
Mr. Georgetti said his group does not condone violence, but some others are promising similar treatment for the Montreal meeting. One hotel has already bowed out of hosting the conference, nervous it could get trashed, and Montreal police held a news conference yesterday to discuss their security measures.
Inside the downtown hotel, discussions will focus on preparing the ground for a major WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September, the official half-way point in what is supposed to be four years of talks starting in Doha and culminating in a new deal in 2005.
A senior Canadian official said yesterday at a background briefing that the government is willing to increase import levels of agricultural products such as cheese and poultry as part of negotiations, but will continue to defend the Canadian Wheat Board and the supply management system, targets of U.S. and EU ire.
Of more short-term importance will be talks between Japanese and Canadian ministers on the crisis facing the beef industry. Lyle Vanclief, the Agriculture Minister, and his Japanese counterpart will meet, and both Mr. Vanclief and Mr. Pettigrew intend to press their case for a lifting of foreign embargoes imposed on Canadian beef due to fears of mad-cow disease.
Mr. Pettigrew also said he intends to serve Alberta beef to his guests, including the Japanese.
Other disputes between countries are likely to be brought up as well, such as the softwood lumber battle with the United States, although no breakthrough is expected there.
The goal of what is being billed as an informal meeting is to get ministers representing the majority of the world's population and trade, ranging from Brazil and Mexico to New Zealand and the European Union, to lay their negotiating cards on the table.
"It's a meeting to weed out the issues so we don't spend the first few days in Cancun restating our position," Mr. Pettigrew said. "We'll be hot and ready to go the minute we put our foot on the ground in Cancun."
In a series of private sessions the ministers will look at three issues: how ambitious a deal they really want; how much give and take there can be on issues involving developing countries, which in the WTO's decision-by-consensus world have put the brakes on the more ambitious agendas of developed countries; and whether to expand the round to include investment and other issues not agreed to in Doha.
ijack@nationalpost.com
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.