This occurs as the United States and the European Union clashed over food aid to poor countries. We speak with Anuradha Mittal, an expert on world and trade issues in Hong Kong.

The conference is the culmination of a multi-year WTO negotiation process referred to as the “Doha round" that began in Qatar in 2001. Trade Ministers from 149 countries are negotiating a series of multilateral trade agreements that would rewrite trade laws on agriculture, industrial goods and services. Much of the negotiations at the WTO meeting centers on agricultural trade laws.

* Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong and Chairman of the WTO:

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a historic junction--trade, liberalisation and economic growth is a permanent goal for all of us as WTO members. While I acknowledge, in some parts of the world, this goal is seen as a threat rather than an opportunity, the negotiations under the Doha agenda must press ahead.

The World Trade Organization meeting has been met by thousands of demonstrators from around the globe including farmers, trade unionists, migrant workers and activists from immigrant rights and women’s rights groups. Earlier today, a group of militant South Korean farmers attempted to gain access to the WTO meeting by pushing through hundreds of riot police.

On Tuesday, nine people were injured when police used a skin irritant spray on a group of protestors. Hong Kong is staging one of its largest security efforts ever. Authorities say they want to avoid a repeat of the massive protests that shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and disrupted the WTO in Cancun in 2003.

Before the meetings began, Hong Kong authorities tried to prevent many international activists from entering the city. Jose Bove, the prominent French anti-globalization activist and farmer, was initially denied entry into Hong Kong and held at an airport detention center until the French delegation intervened. On Tuesday, protestors sneaked inside the conference hall and disrupted WTO Director-General Pasal Lamy’s inaugural speech with shouts of “development yes, Doha no,” and, “no deal is better than a bad deal.” The biggest point of contention at the WTO meeting has been proposals to lower agricultural tariffs. Critics say such a move would benefit the rich at the expense of poor farmers.

* Walden Bello
, speaking at the WTO yesterday, Director of Focus on the Global South:

Ten years of the WTO has brought nothing but more poverty, more inequality, economic stagnation throughout many parts, throughout most of the developing world. This is not an institution that promotes development. This is an institution that promotes corporate trade, promotes corporate profit, that promotes destruction of the environment. It is an anti-people organisation.

One of the largest group of protesters in Hong Kong are South Korean rice farmers who fear that new agreements advocated by the U.S and supported by the Korean government will lead to the disappearance of 3.5 million farming jobs and an end to food security for the country. During the last two days, South Koreans have led attempts to reach the convention center by swimming across Hong Kong Bay. They have been blocked off by heavily armed police barricades and beaten back by riot police with pepper spray and batons.

On Wednesday, the United States and the European Union clashed over food aid to poor countries. EU delegates complained that the US distorts trade and protects US farmers by sending food commodities to poor nations. And US officials have been pressuring the EU to change their farm tariffs and subsidies. The deadlock over farm trade has already led negotiators to lower expectations for the meeting’s outcome.

* Anuradha Mittal, founder and director of The Oakland Institute, a California-based think that advocates for fair trade. Speaking from Hong Kong.

LISTEN ONLINE:
www.democracynow.org/article.pl