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World's elite meet to discuss economics, security

Top business, political and religious leaders opened the World Economic Forum's annual meeting on Thursday in New York, with discussions on global economy and security and how to close the gap between the rich and poor.

The five-day gathering, moved to Manhattan after 31 years in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as a vote of confidence in the city after the September 11 attacks, is being held in the plush Waldorf-Astoria Hotel just 5 km from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

It is the first major meeting of the world's movers and shakers since the attacks that sparked a US-led war against terrorism, but US President George W Bush is staying away. US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill will be the highest-ranking US government representatives at the summit.

The theme for the long series of seminars for thousands of captains of industry, cabinet ministers, religious leaders and academics is 'Leadership in Fragile Times: a Vision for a Shared Future'.

Among the corporate guests are Microsoft Corp CEO Bill Gates, McDonald's Corp chairman Jack Greenberg and financier George Soros. Political leaders include German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

In the new security-conscious era, the streets of midtown Manhattan around the hotel resembled an armed camp. About 4,000 police officers and other security personnel are guarding the event, which is expected to draw thousands of demonstrators.

Early Thursday morning, police made their first forum-related arrests, handcuffing seven people from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in two simultaneous protests in Manhattan.

"We are protesting Bush's contribution to the Global AIDS Fund to coincide with world leaders visiting New York," said a spokeswoman for the group, known for attention-grabbing protests against drug manufacturers.

Meanwhile, practitioners of Falun Gong, a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese physical exercises, staged the first of their planned four-day-long demonstrations outside the Waldorf against the Chinese government's ban on its activities.

GLOBAL DEBATE

Inside the gilded halls of the hotel, 1,000 executives from some of the world's most powerful companies will mingle with heads of state and finance ministers, cultural leaders and activists to discuss the new challenges for global capitalism -- and possibly strike some juicy corporate deals in the process.

The debate about how the September 11 attacks changed the fabric of global politics and society will extend to the streets outside in several demonstrations by anti-capitalist organisations.

Groups such as ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), Students for Global Justice and Anti-Capitalist Convergence said the police had exaggerated the threat of possible violence on the scale of other international meetings of recent years.

Violence at the World Trade Organisation summit in 1999 brought Seattle to a standstill. Police shot and killed a demonstrator at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, last year.

Civil rights lawyers will be on hand to monitor police conduct during the protests, the first of which is planned later on Thursday by labor unions outside Gap Inc's flagship clothing store on Fifth Avenue. The Gap and other apparel stores and manufacturers have long been targets of unions and activists who charge them with operating 'sweatshops' in developing countries with low wages and poor working conditions.

"Just as the police are taking a position of zero-tolerance for law breaking by demonstrators, so too is the civil rights legal community taking a position of zero-tolerance for police misconduct," said Ron Kuby, one of the lawyers who will wear a red armband marked 'Legal' during the protests.

The meeting marks the first time that the World Economic Forum has left Davos, an exclusive vacation spot for the rich and powerful nestled in the Swiss Alps, in the three decades since it was founded by German-born academic Klaus Schwab.

Schwab has portrayed the decision to move the Forum to New York as a gesture of solidarity with the city. The Swiss government was also concerned about rising costs of security and a repeat of clashes between police and protesters at last year's meeting. The WEF is due to move back to Switzerland in 2003, but its venue thereafter is still up in the air.

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