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Indian activists storm WTO's office

NEW DELHI: Three Indian nationalist activists stormed a business luncheon attended by World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Mike Moore on Tuesday, to protest against the trade body's policies.

"It's like home," said Moore, who was unflustered after the activists from the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), a group calling for economic nationalism, gate-crashed the meeting in New Delhi.

The 50-year-old former New Zealand prime minister was referring to demonstrations by anti-WTO campaigners in his home country and in Seattle in November, where trade ministers from 135 countries failed to launch a new round of global talks.

After distributing pamphlets and a letter to Moore, one of the protesters, Umendra Dutt, walked to the microphone and said: "WTO is not the World Trade Organisation; it is the Western Trade Organisation."

"You people are being fooled," he told the 40-odd businessmen assembled in a hotel conference room. "Your industries will close down if the WTO (rules) are enforced."

Outside, around 100 activists of the SJM -- an affiliate of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party which leads a coalition federal government -- shouted slogans.

"Mike Moore, go back; Down, down WTO; Long live mother India," they chanted.

The letter to Moore read: "To protect the economic interests of a few million farmers on either side of the Atlantic, the WTO has reached an agreement on agriculture, which is aimed at marginalising 550 million Indian farmers and putting the country's food security at an unimaginable risk."

MOORE DEFENDS WTO

Before the SJM members interrupted the meeting, Moore defended the multilateral trading system that the WTO represents.

"We are going to find it very difficult without cooperation. We cannot enjoy clean air, clean water; we can't run an airline system...in the future without cooperation," he said.

"It's the international community which will solve cancer or AIDS or problems that plague our society. Not individual countries."

Moore, in New Delhi to participate in business conferences and to meet government officials, said he expected fresh discussions on agriculture and services to start this year.

On Monday, he said a new round of global trade talks was inevitable despite the failure of the Seattle round, but did not specify when he expected it to start.

The WTO chief admitted that there were weaknesses in his organisation's structure and functioning, but said despite the problems the world would be worse off without it.

He conceded that the fears of those opposed to the WTO were understandable, given the fundamental changes in global economies and trade regimes. "In history, at any time of seismic economic change, there has been a great deal of fear..."

"My advice to the gentleman (SJM's Dutt) would be: good for you. Get elected and become your (Indian) minister... Remember, my masters are your ministers," Moore said.-Reuters