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Doha, Qatar. Nov. 10 (AFP). Anti-globalization groups, attending a WTO ministerial meeting here, charged yesterday that corporate-driven global trade practices create a breeding ground for terrorism.
"The last two decades have been marked by inequality and poverty and also unrestricted trade liberalization...which creates conditions for terrorism," declared Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South.
"The regional context in which this conference is being held cannot be ignored," Bello said, accusing the WTO of meeting like "ostriches with their heads in the sand."
He was speaking as World Trade Organization ministers opened a five-day conference here. Bello said that it would be an "act of fundamental responsibility" for the WTO and delegation heads to issue a "strong statement asking for an end to the misery and tragedy being inflicted on Afghanistan."
"International trade and politics are inseparable," he said.
Naseem Bukhari of Noor Pakistan warned that up to seven million Afghan refugees would flee the US bombardment of their country-reprisals for harboring Osama bin Lade, deemed the prime suspect by Washington in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.
While condemning the outrages in New York and Washington that killed thousands, Bukhari suggested that the United States should reassess its "interventions and policies in the world."
Anuradha Mittal of the United States-based Food First said there was a "ground-zero being created in Afghanistan as we speak," a reference to the term used for the site of the bombed trade towers in New York.
"It is important to look at the structural causes of why people are angry," Mittal added.
Maude Barlow of the Coucil of Canadians likened the military strikes on Afghanistan, " to trying to find cancer cells with a blow torch."
She said the U.S.-led coalition in the campaign against terrorism was bullying the Third World nations into adopting war economies," that diverted the monies previously earmarked for health and education into military and border security.
"U.S. President George Bush was also using the events of September 11 to " impose a model on the whole world based on market values, North American dominance and deregulation," Barlow said.
"There is a Third Way, and that is not the agenda of economic fundamentalism the North is pushing on the South, but fair trade practices," she said.
Joshua Mata of the Philippines, based Alliance for progressive Labor said that the suicide jet liner bombings were being used to, "bamboozle developing countries into implementing a new trade round."
The outrages have changed the international scene according to Mata, "against the poor and in favor of the right wingers."
"We are seeing a country bombed into the stone age." Bello warned,
adding that efforts to paint the globalization movement as somehow linked to
terrorism were "malicious."
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