Chakravarthi Raghavan
Geneva, 3 Sep
At a United Nations conference hall in Geneva on Wednesday, three African envoys and a former envoy from a Latin American Caribbean country, spoke about the pressures from the majors at the WTO and in the trade negotiations and the helplessness of their countries and themselves in having to yield or remain silent.
Only the voices of civil society groups bringing out these things in public, and their help for the emergence of strong political leadership in the developing countries, can change these, the envoys said without mincing matters or pretending that these things do not happen.
The envoys were: Tanzania’s Amb. Charles Mutalemwa, Uganda’s Amb. Nathan Irumba, and a Kenya’s Alternative Representative and Counsellor at the WTO, Mr. Nelson Ndirangu.
The fourth was the Dominican Republic’s former Ambassador at the WTO, Dr. Federico Cuello, who was recalled and reassigned by his government, when the US complained over his stands at Doha and before, and wanted him to be recalled. He is now working with the opposition in the Congress of his country and also teaching at the university. Soon after he left Geneva, the fact of his recall under US pressure was known here, but Federico confirmed it at the book launch.
All four were participating and speaking at a function to launch a book, “Behind the Scenes at the WTO: The Real World of International Trade Negotiations” by Fatoumata Jawara and Aileen Kwa, and published by Zed Books. Six British development organizations - ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children and the World Development Movement - had joined to co-fund the authors in their research and writing, and the publication and release at London and Geneva.
The development campaigners, in a press release, said that the book showed the brutal power politics and arm-twisting of developing countries that goes on at the WTO. The six organizations released also a list of basic democratic demands for WTO negotiations.
A wider civil society group across the world has also launched a similar campaign, and put out a report about the meeting of some of them just in August with the WTO head.
The talk about non-transparency, secretive and manipulative small group consultations, and the highly partial and partisan way in which the secretariats act to promote US and EU interests, may give rise to a feeling of déja vu.
The kind of manipulative processes at play behind closed doors at the old GATT has been known to a small circle of experts around the globe and the media - for the media in the developed countries, it does not even shock, but is taken as part of the process where their countries benefit.
These practices have been around, since about the time of the Tokyo Round (under then GATT DG Olivier Long), became more formalized under GATT DG Arthur Dunkel (in the ‘green room’, his conference room with green wall paper decor) and was brought into the open in a book by this writer (1990) in ‘Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round and the Third World’.
Since the WTO was brought into being, there has been an attempt by those heading the WTO, and by secretariat officials, and several major industrialized countries, that all these practices were in the past, and that the discussions and consultations are by and large ‘transparent and inclusive’.
Even as late as May this year, in evidence by some senior WTO officials (purportedly in personal capacity) to the UK House of Commons Select Committee on International Development - Dr.Supachai Panitchpakdi, Mr. Stuart Harbinson, Mr.Richard Eglin, Mr. Alberto Campeas and Mr. Sishir Priyadarshi, who all tried to present a picture of things at the WTO being different now, and even trying to suggest that the negotiating capacities of developing countries have now improved (since the GATT days). Mr. Priyadarshi, an Indian negotiator in the runup to and at Seattle and for sometime in 2000, and then was at the South Centre before joining the WTO. He points to the professional staff at the Indian WTO mission of nine now, compared to two some years ago (during the early parts of the Uruguay Round, and towards the end it was actually three). Mr. Priyadarshi said (page ev 174 of Vol.II of the Select Committee report), that it would no longer be possible for 2-3 major players coming to an agreement outside and thrusting in on others, and about the number of ‘green room process’ meetings were much less and receding.
They may be technically correct, in that many of these meetings have shifted outside, including the many mini-ministerials, but came to the fore at Doha, and now at the WTO in the preparations for Cancun, and the same Doha process seems likely to prevail at Cancun too.
Well, the two authors of the book, through extensive interviews with some officials and negotiators, as well as the three current envoys and the former envoy - made clear in their speeches at the book launch that the pressures and threats, directly to diplomats here and in capitals, the secretive small consultations, and non-transparent negotiating processes, are all very much alive.
The three African envoys said that they felt helpless, that they expressed their positions and views on the basis of instructions and acting in the best interests of their country, but the majors got to their capitals to express their displeasure and threatened to hold up trade quotas or aid funds, until the capitals changed their views and sent different instructions.
Kenya’s Ndirangu specifically mentioned this, in relation to the TRIPS and Public Health negotiations, where a small group of 5 were called in to ‘consult’ with the Chairman of the TRIPS Council, and subsequently in informal consultations Ndirangu took a stand based on instructions from his capital, and expressed some reservations with the proposed solutions. The US and others, he said, applied pressures on his Minister and officials, who changed instructions, and the US and others were asking him why he was not changing his position.
The Tanzanian envoy noted that before coming here, he was the permanent secretary, and when Tanzania in the runup to Doha was organizing a meeting of the LDCs (that took place at Zanzibar), officials and envoys of some European countries came to him and wanted to know his position, and complained about the meeting itself. The Tanzanian envoy said at that time he had told them that while he and the Tanzanian government had some views, their positions for Doha would be shaped by the LDC meeting.
Federico said that when he took positions on the Singapore issues, the GATS, and was with the like-minded group, before and at Doha, the US made clear to his capital their displeasure, and the Dominican Republic was not even being invited to attend a meeting to negotiate a free trade agreement for the region with Washington.
His government recalled him, and replaced him with another envoy, and changed the economic policies. Federico himself then resigned and is now providing support and advice to the opposition in the Congress of his country.
He added: “But the neo-liberal policies we embraced have created greater economic difficulties within my country, so much so that there is now a growing view in his country that perhaps the policies are wrong, and we must go back to our original policies... Let us see.”
The book, based on meetings that the authors had with several WTO diplomats and secretariat officials, and others, as well as published writings and reports, explores both the pre-Doha, Doha and post-Doha processes, and sets out the kind of inducements offered to small countries, directly by funding or indirectly by clearing or opposing IMF/World Bank loans, and says that the WTO negotiations is not one of genuine give and take, but of arm twisting and pressures and threats, with which major international organizations and their senior officials, in particular those at the WTO play a part. Only the rich have the real leverage, and most developing countries - desperate for trade opportunities, aid, debt reduction etc - have little choice but to succumb. “The strong arm politics of the major economic powers sabotages any serious attempts by developing countries to unite and fight for more equitable trade agreements that might improve their economies and/or trading positions.”
The book says:
* The WTO negotiations operate in a climate of fear. Also, the supposedly neutral WTO secretariat have repeatedly sided with rich nations and even assisted them by giving wrong advice to developing countries, or misinforming them about the positions of others - for example, Kenya was told that India had changed it position on a crucial issue, and as a result Kenya subsequently changed its own line.
* The US and EC have systematically used promises of free trade agreements and favourable access to markets as a bribe to break up developing country alliances.
* USTR Robert Zoellick promised greater trade concessions to LDCs if they supported US positions.
* Pakistan was granted $600 million in US aid and $500 million debt relief by George W.Bush during the Doha meeting. Its WTO ambassador, Munir Akram, is quoted in the book as saying, “we don’t like it... but it is a question of whether we have to swallow it.” It also quotes an observer at Doha as saying, “The Pakistani minister was very accommodating. This was unusual.”
* Tanzania like others caved in under pressure and succumbed to the offer of a few crumbs... Just a week later, on 27 November 2001, the IMF and World Bank announced that Tanzania would receive external debt relief of $3 billion over time.
* The US maintains a blacklist of ‘unhelpful’ developing country trade negotiators, with up to five WTO Ambassadors on this list, including the Dominican Republic’s Federico, have been forced out of their positions as a result of diplomatic pressure on their governments. Some developing country diplomats follow and provide reports to the US on the positions of ambassadors of developing countries so that they could be influenced.
Federico Cuello said at the London book launch, “developing countries at the WTO are not free to speak or associate. Countries are penalized for speaking their minds or building alliances with like-minded countries... they are not free to promote their national interests even on less uneven terms. Their issues are ignored unless presented as group proposals. And once those groups become too effective, their ambassadors are removed from their posts. I should know this, as I together with five other of my colleagues, was one of the victims of a collective decapitation of ambassadors that started at Doha... Instead of favouring the weak, the rules preserve the distortions of the strong..”
Trade, and the neo-mercantalist policies of major countries in promoting the interests of their corporations is a high-stakes ‘game’. And the extent to which powerful countries go, in trying to change policies of even some big industrial countries, comes in a report in the Guardian newspaper of Thursday about a case of US and France.
The report says that a book (to be published next week) about the history of the French counter-espionage service (DST) brings out how a junior minister in charge of civil service reforms in the present government, Harve Plagnol, passed classified information to a US contact in Paris, including about France’s baseline positions in the GATT Uruguay Round talks.
According to the Guardian report, in 1992, while working as a lecturer at the elite Sciences-Po academy in Paris and as an adviser to the new prime minister, Edouard Balladur, Plagnol began lunching with Mary Ann Baumgartner, a CIA agent, who presented herself as the head of the Dallas Market Centre, a foundation that sought to “clarify misunderstandings between Europe and the United States”. Plagnol is cited as saying that he had “no idea the information could have interested the CIA.” Soon after he was appointed to Mr Balladur’s office, he was told by the French counterespionage boss, that Ms Baumgartner was a spy, and he was forced to resign his highly paid adviser’s job. A month later, however, Plagnol was asked to feed his contact false information - and told that he would be allowed to keep the œ500 the Americans had been paying him for each meeting.
“I found myself in an extraordinary game of liar’s poker, trying to persuade the Americans that I was a valuable source. I succeeded,” Plagnol is quoted as saying. The Guardian report said the game continued until December 1993, when France got what it wanted from the world trade talks and the DST told the CIA that it had been caught red-handed trying to infiltrate the highest ranks of the French bureaucracy. But Plagnol was never charged, “his integrity never having been in doubt,” the authors are quoted as having written in the book.
One may ask, and several western media representatives asked at the Geneva book launch, why the ambassadors or countries yield, or they cite some other ambassadors here as denying all these, and claiming that such civil society complaints are figments of imagination.
Many other representatives, and their capitals and officials, deny they have yielded or are under pressure and threats. At the WTO, diplomats and officials from developing countries, confess in private to unbearable pressures under which they yield, and explain their denials in terms of no one wanting to confess to failures or the weakness of having surrendered and cried ‘uncle’, while some publicly affirm and defend these processes.
There is an psychological explanation for all these. In 1973, four Swedes held in a bank vault for six days during a robbery became attached to their captors, and this led to a study by psychologists about the abused bonding to their abusers as a means to endure violence, and this became known as the Stockholm Syndrome (source, The Peace Encyclopedia).
Even before, there was the case in US state of California, of Patricia Hearst, the heiress to the Hearst Newspaper empire and fortune, who was kidnapped and held hostage by one of the black militant groups (the Black panthers perhaps) and who on release emerged from captivity supporting her captors, and angering California upper class society and right wing groups. She later married her bodyguard, and has published a book, where she has recounted how this happens and how long it took her to get over it.
All these experiences and the Stockholm syndrome, is used to explain collective behaviours in countries and over time.
Publicizing and public civil society campaigns alone can provide a corrective, the envoys at the book launch said, and appealed to the NGOs, particularly in developed countries, to continue their campaigns over the WTO and its agendas.