Lebanon will host the Arab world’s first anti-globalization forum in the first week of November, before the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Doha kicks off on November 9, reported the Daily Star newspaper on Sunday.
Ralph Nader, a former US presidential candidate and consumer-rights pioneer, is expected to attend the protest forum in Beirut, organizers said.
The Lebanese government, which was granted observer status in the WTO in 1999, is planning to start negotiation rounds for WTO membership before the year’s end. It has not indicated its plans for the Qatar meeting.
Several Arab countries are expected to boycott the conference because Israel is attending.
“The Lebanese government claims it has to embrace globalization and join the WTO,” said organizer, Ziad Abdul-Samad.
“We are against WTO membership, but we want at the very least to try to convince the government that it should reassess its negotiating position,” he told the paper.
Economy and Trade Minister Basil Fuleihan defended Lebanon’s intention to join the WTO, saying he favored trade liberalization that would drop all tariffs.
“We are not against WTO per se as an organization regulating world trade,” insisted Abdul-Samad. “But today, it is being used by a handful of powers and 400 multi-national corporations to control small economies.”
Abdul-Samad argued that developing countries needed to tailor their economic policies to their own distinct needs and not to WTO requirements.
The activist said protesters against globalization could not be ignored, and that anti-WTO sentiment was picking up throughout the world.
“Even the United States, the mother of globalization, could not turn the anti-globalization tide,” said Abdul-Samad.
The breadth of the anti-globalization movement in the US was on display at the WTO negotiation round in Seattle last year, when thousands of protesters took to the streets.
To the protestors' delight, the 2000 round failed due to the developing nations’ resistance to the demands of wealthier WTO members – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
