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IMF protests not to be on Seattle scale-activist

WASHINGTON: Protests planned for next month's meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington will not be on the scale of the mayhem at the Seattle trade talks in December, an activist said.

Lori Wallach, who helped organise the protests that sank the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle, said the demonstrations planned for mid-April against the IMF/World Bank would be "smaller scale, but I think quite passionate."

Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, told the Foreign Policy journal that many of the protests at the Spring meeting would be by church-based groups who were keen to see greater debt relief for developing countries.

Protesters in Seattle brought the WTO talks to a standstill after stopping delegates attend the negotiations. A minority vandalised the port city's downtown centre, prompting the mayor to declare a curfew and call in the National Guard.

Washington police fear the same kind of protests may disrupt the IMF and World Bank meeting around the weekend of April 15-16.-Reuters