the ripoff

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

Trade piracy unmasked

Leaked British documents show how we will stitch up the developing
world at the WTO

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 6, 2001
The Guardian

Just as woodworkers used to drink in the Carpenter's Arms, or
farmhands in the Jolly Ploughman, the trade negotiators from the
world's richest nations have found their way to their own hallowed
ground. When they gather in Switzerland, they dine together in an
exclusive restaurant on the shores of Lake Geneva called the Pirate.
It's here that the members of "the quad" - the US, EU, Canada and
Japan - study their maps and count their doubloons.

In Seattle in 1999, the world trade talks failed because the weaker
countries, excluded from the key negotiations, walked out. Now, we
have been promised, the rich world has learned from its mistakes. At
the new talks in Qatar on Friday, the nations of "the quad" will, they
insist, rescue the castaways of the new world order. But the progress
so far suggests that, instead of being allowed a share in the spoils
of free trade, the world's poor will be walking the plank.

The draft declaration due to be discussed this weekend was mostly
written during two exclusive meetings: in Mexico in August and in
Singapore last month. Though the World Trade Organisation has 142
members, only 21 nations, among them the world's richest and most
powerful, were permitted to attend. The documents the meeting produced
were then submitted to the other members for approval. They were not
permitted to make substantial changes.

As a result, the draft declaration contains almost none of the
concessions that developing countries, representing most of the
world's people, have requested. Powerful nations have refused to stop
subsidising their exports of meat, grain and sugar: by dumping them in
weak countries at artificially low prices, they destroy the
livelihoods of local farmers. Britain and Germany have insisted that
they will not relax the laws governing the patenting of drugs: poor
countries facing public health disasters will continue to be denied
cheap medicine.

The poor world wants the rich world to honour the promises it made
under the last world trade agreement, before starting any new
negotiations. Instead "the quad" is loading the agenda with new and
fiendishly complex issues, such as investment, services and government
procurement.

At first sight this approach makes no sense. Just as Presidents Bush
and Blair insist that the world's future prosperity, democracy and
even freedom from terror will depend on a successful new trade round,
their negotiators appear to be doing everything in their power to
undermine it. But all that has happened is that the powerful nations
have abandoned the pretence of seeking consent. Now they will simply
bludgeon the developing world into submission.

Last month in Geneva an African delegate to the World Trade
Organisation complained that, "If I speak out too strongly, the US
will phone my minister. They will twist the story and say that I am
embarrassing the United States. My government will not even ask, 'What
did he say?' They will just send me a ticket tomorrow... I fear that
bilateral pressure will get me, so I don't speak, for fear of
upsetting the master. To me, that threat is real. Because I am from a
poor country, I can't say what I want." If the poor nations complain,
the rich nations simply withdraw aid or freeze their exports.

Now, as Christian Aid has revealed, some governments are dispensing
with negotiations altogether. Britain's Department for International
Development, run by Clare Short, has decided to bypass the World Trade
Organisation and apply direct pressure on poor nations to open up
their markets to foreign companies. The department has told Ghana that
aid money for a water project will be conditional on the country's
privatisation of its water industry. Without consulting its own
people, the government of Ghana has been forced to start raising the
price of water by between two and three times, to prepare the industry
for sale to British, French or US companies.

Though Ghana's water infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate, the
corporations bidding for the contracts appear to be under no
obligation to use their profits to invest in new pipes or treatment
plants. They will make millions, but already Ghanaians are being
forced to draw their water from polluted rivers and ditches, infested
with cholera and guinea worm, as they can't pay the new rates.

But while quietly plundering the poorer nations, our pirate states
like to pretend that they are compassionate and even-handed. Britain's
Department of Trade and Industry, as its website boasts, holds regular
meetings with campaign groups such as the World Development Movement,
in order to "share information" and "gather views". But, as a series
of leaked documents shows, behind the scenes the British government is
doing all it can to undermine them.

The papers were discovered by members of the research group Corporate
Europe Observatory, who were investigating a powerful trade
association called International Financial Services, London (IFSL).
The researchers stumbled upon an unlinked page, accidentally appended
to the lobbyists' website.

International Financial Services, London is one of several British
groups hoping that the trade talks can be expanded to cover a wide
range of service industries. The proposed new general agreement on
trade in services, due to be discussed alongside the other treaties in
Qatar, could oblige countries to privatise key public services such as
health, education and water. The leaked page contained the minutes of
meetings held by the secretive "Liberalisation of Trade in Services"
committee set up to liaise between IFSL and the British government.

British civil servants, the researchers discovered, were worried that
campaign groups opposed to the general agreement on trade in services
were becoming too effective. The minutes recorded that Matthew Lownds,
from the Foreign Office, "noted that the campaign by the World
Development Movement in particular was leading to a broadening of
concerns... He also pointed to the need to coordinate business
responses to the NGO's allegations". Malcolm McKinnon, a civil servant
from the Department of Trade and Industry, complained that the case
for the general agreement was "vulnerable" when campaigners asked for
"proof of where the economic benefits lay" for poor nations. The
committee decided to spend £50,000 to £70,000 to "counter the NGOs."

More damagingly, the civil servants appear to have been passing
critical European Union papers to the business people on the
committee, including negotiating documents from other countries, which
could be enormously valuable to companies hoping to anticipate hostile
positions. These papers, the Corporate Europe Observatory points out,
are unavailable even to members of the European parliament.

So the government, while secretly colluding with corporate lobbyists,
has been double-crossing the public and undermining some of the
poorest countries on earth. Tony Blair and Clare Short call this
process "development". It is not development. It's piracy.