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As protesters gather, leaders focus on aid

Global leaders at the World Economic Forum urged rich nations on Saturday to end their "selfish" ways and offer poor countries a better path to prosperity as thousands protested in the streets against corporate greed.

The business and political elite -- from Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates and International Monetary Fund chief Horst Koehler to rock icon Bono -- chided the industrialised nations for being reluctant to address inequality, debt relief and health issues.

"Societies in the advanced countries are too selfish to give up privileges which are needed in order to give the poor a better chance," Koehler told a panel on the global economic outlook.

Outside the posh Manhattan hotel where 2,700 delegates were gathered for the third of the five-day conference, more than 5,000 raucous anti-globalisation protesters were kept at bay by phalanxes of police in riot gear.

Kate Farmer, 53, a research scientist from Northampton, Mass., carried a sewing machine with a sign saying: "22 cents an hour in Lesotho, Africa, sewing clothes for you."

"There are people now in Lesotho being abused working in Taiwanese sweatshops in Lesotho to make clothes for the Gap, Wal-Mart and K-mart," she said.

HEALTHY GROWTH

The world's richest man, multi-billionaire Gates argued for more investment in health issue to assist poor countries to grow. To that end, he said his foundation was donating $50 million toward HIV and AIDS prevention.

"The health agenda is inarguable," said Bono, who shared a stage with Gates. "If you are to get out of the morass of living off the nipple of aid, you have to have health."

There was sterner sentiment from US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who defended US reluctance to substantially increase foreign development aid, saying it was more productive to help poor countries better manage the aid they now receive.

The point, he said, was to make developing countries "engines of economic growth, and not just the objects of our pity."

World Trade Organisation chief Mike Moore, however, said wealthy nations must open their markets and address the inequity of protectionism. The new Doha round of global trade talks would fail poor countries without more access for their agricultural exports, he said.

"Criticisms about how the markets of the North are closed are totally correct," Moore told a news conference. "It is an injustice that has to be addressed."

Both the IMF and the WTO are popular targets for anti-globalisation demonstrators, who say they enable rich countries and multinational corporations to ride roughshod over developing countries.

Although thousands rallied against the Forum, the mood was both festive and defiant. A giant papier-mache vulture bore the letters "WEF" on its breast while a large canvas dragon on poles read, "The WEF is Dragon Us Down."

There were only nine arrests reported, unlike the violence at the Group of Seven meeting last year in Genoa, Italy and riots in Seattle in 1999.

The protesters in New York echoed themes being discussed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where participants put forth a vision of a world without third world debt.

"The roads toward resolving our foreign debt problems are the roads of freedom for our countries," Argentine Nobel laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said at the second day of the event -- the activist world's answer to the WEF.

SHADOW OF SEPT. 11

With the destruction of the World Trade towers by airplane attacks on September 11 as a backdrop, how to address inequality that can lead to violence was high on the agenda at this year's annual gathering of rich and powerful.

French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius said the world could not expect to wage the fight without a parallel battle to snuff out the poverty that breeds resentment at world powers.

"If we want to get rid of terrorism, there is not only a war in terms of military action, but there is a necessity of war in terms of helping poor countries to develop," he said.

US Sen Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, added: "We can spend hundreds of millions putting a country back together again after we have gone to war. Why don't we spend some of that to prevent them from going to war in the first place?"

India's Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had suggestions on how that can be done, saying rich countries must stop coming up with "new and inventive" ways to block access to their markets and allow poor countries to develop their export industries.

The IMF's Koehler scolded the United States and Europe for lacking the will to halt subsidies that protect domestic farmers and to give poor countries access to agricultural markets.

"The US is also a sinner," he said. "And certainly we also need to see a breaking up in agricultural policy in Europe."

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