February 12, 2000	atimes.com

Global Economy Unctad meeting may trip over too-high hopes By Johanna Son BANGKOK - This month's meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) in Thailand is being bruited about as a sequel to the debate on globalization, played out at world trade talks in Seattle last year. Indeed, Secretary General Rubens Ricupero says the 10th session of Unctad should ''heal'' the nasty rift between North and South caused by attempts at the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Seattle to lock developing countries into the free-trade agenda pushed by rich countries and the trade body they dominate. But the hopes that many activists, economists and government officials pin on the February 12-19 Unctad conference, which is drawing representatives from some 180 countries, may well be too high. This is because unlike the WTO, Unctad is not a forum for negotiating binding trade agreements, although it has for decades been the voice of developing countries and has drawn the ire of the United States that had only recently wanted it abolished. Likewise, the 35-year-old Unctad itself is by no means a monolithic body and has been riven by conflicts even among developing countries. How Unctad handles the conference and whether it can create a new niche for itself in the global debate on an appropriate development model, in the wake of the Asian crisis, could shape the future of the institution. ''Here is where Unctad, quite influential in the 70s and 80s, can reassert itself not only morally and analytically, but as a competitor toward becoming a negotiating authority'' in the areas of global trade, finance, investment and development, said Walden Bello of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. ''Will Unctad take this opportunity? This is what the billions of dollars that the IMF and WTO cannot have - and that is legitimacy.'' Unctad is a forum ''to define world opinion'' and should act as such, Surichai Wun-gaeo, director of social development studies at Chulalongkorn University, has been quoted as saying. While Unctad cannot and should not replace the WTO, ''it is Unctad's task to play midwife to a more democratic system of global economic governance'', Walden Bello and Nicola Bullard wrote in a published commentary this week. Others are not as optimistic. ''I think it is illusion to think that Unctad can be a negotiating forum. I don't think 'realpolitik' will allow that to happen,'' said Yash Tandon of the Zimbabwe-based International South Group Network. He was referring to how industrialized Western countries have been working for decades for market-friendly global rules that suit their economic and commercial interests, and will not give up without a fight. Still, the Unctad meet gives economists, government officials and civil society, learning from the lessons of Seattle, another venue to discuss reforms in the world trade regime and the larger issue of managing globalization. This will no doubt move along calls that economic liberalization has to be managed with the end of improving quality of life instead of adding to poverty and rich-poor gaps - rhetoric also heard from the captains of capitalism at last month's World Economic Forum at Davos. This is already a victory for many activists who have been lobbying for these views for many years, coming at a time when global institutions for economic governance like the WTO and International Monetary Fund - are undergoing a severe crisis of relevance. The WTO talks in Seattle collapsed amid complaints by developing countries about the US railroading of its agenda and about the lack of transparency of negotiations. For its part, the IMF has been undergoing more scrutiny than ever before in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and its prescriptions. The confluence of these factors means that there is greater room now for voices that question an economic model that heretofore critics say has been shaped mostly by industrialized-country, and increasingly corporate, interests. An Unctad with more clout, that the rich countries listen to, would make for a ''more pluralistic global economic regime rather than a few behemoths'' like the WTO ''sitting on the top of the world and subjecting everything everything to the priority of trade'', Bello explained. In a five-page set of proposals submitted to the conference, more than 200 representatives of NGOs who met in Bangkok this week said: ''Unctad's research and analysis has already played a key role in exposing the negative effects of globalization and suggesting alternative policies for addressing them.'' The NGOs urged the Geneva-based organization to work more on the ''development'' side of its mandate. They also listed proposals for action on everything from the debt problem of poor countries to labor and environment standards and food security. ''Unctad must see itself as representing the interests of marginalized people in both the North and South,'' the activists argued. But they also concede that Unctad and the Bangkok meeting will not bring an instant answer to all ills. Some were disheartened by remarks by Ricupero at the NGO meetings that Unctad does not have negotiating authority, and interpreted that as a signal of defeat in challenging the dominance of, for example, the WTO. ''We will deal with these same matters [as at Seattle], not to negotiate an agreement but to prepare for renewed negotiations and give these issues a development perspective,'' Ricupero told a press conference earlier in the week. At a media discussion Wednesday night, Bello said a major problem was that developing countries in Unctad were not united. ''In Seattle, countries came together against the structure of decision-making, but on substance there was a diversity of views,'' he explained. Even in Southeast Asia after the economic crisis, countries like Thailand and the Philippines continue to push the same development model shaped by free trade and economic liberalization, he asserts. Yet critics say that even if confined solely to trade, Unctad should, just as it secured more favorable terms of trade for developing countries in past years, work to give poorer countries more room and flexibility in the new world trade arrangement. They say the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, at least gave developing countries ''special and differential treatment'' given their weaker clout in trade, but the WTO sets uniform rules for all, except for different timetables. Critics of the WTO point to growing resentment by developing countries of a set-up where industrialized nations pry open their markets by invoking free-trade rules, but find ways to subsidize their own exports and block the entry of exports where the countries of the South are most competitive in: agriculture and textiles. No quick answers will be ready at the Unctad meeting in Bangkok, but certainly it has been much more open to hearing divergent views than the Seattle meeting, which was marred by violence. Ricupero has made it a point to say here that it is better to allow opposing views to be aired in the open, through NGO parallel forums and limited street activities (which the Thai government is nevertheless worried about). The Brazilian chief of Unctad says he sees healthy signs of ''compromise'' after Seattle. But if the dominant free-trade model continues unchanged, NGOs say tensions between developed and developing countries will deepen, while officials see drawn-out tussles over trade. (Inter Press Service)

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