[asia-apec 827] Latest on MAI

[BAYAN]

>Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:41:27 -0500
>From: Pao-yu Ching <paoyc at earthlink.net>
>To: Bayan <bayan at iname.com>
>Subject: National Lawyers Guild's Convention and latest on MAI
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------	
>Maude Barlow was in town and was the keynote speaker of the
>National Lawyers Guild's national convention. She was great. She just
>returned from Paris and reported to the people there the latest development
>on MAI. I am sending you a summary of her report.

>The National Lawyers Guild was established some 60 years ago  as an
>alternative to the American Bar Association which was racially
>segregated and opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal. In the 1950s, Guild lawyers
>represented people attacked by McCarthy and the House of Un-American
>Activities Committee. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) - 
the latest development

Maude Barlow gave the following report on the latest development of MAI in
her keynote speech at the opening of National Lawyers Guild's national
convention in Detroit, U.S.A. on October 22, 1998. Maude Barlow chairs the
Council of Canadians which has 100,000 members. She is a labor activist and
has been involved in opposing MAI from the very beginning.

	Maude Barlow just returned from Paris where people against MAI staged
protest in front of the International Chamber of Commerce. Inside the
International Chamber of Commerce, the OECD was meeting for the first time
since this past April to continue their negotiation on MAI. MAI was put on
a six month moratorium when OECD members had failed to reach an agreement
in April, 1998. (The original deadline was April, 1997.) Now, it is
October, 1998 and the OECD members met again. Due to the good work of many
grassroots organizations across the globe, public support against MAI has
gained strength. Maude Barlow brought the good news to the people at the
convention that the MAI negotiation in Paris collapsed because the French
government withdrew from the negotiation last week. According to her, it
does not look like the negotiation can resume anytime soon. This, of
course, does not mean that the MAI is dead, because the multinational
corporations are pushing the investors' state right similar to those in MAI
through other treaties - the NAFTA and the extended NAFTA, APEC, and WTO.

	This is indeed a victory for all people who have worked against the MAI.
However, there is also bad news. Maude Barlow reported that the Canadian
government lost in the lawsuit which Ethyl Corporation brought against the
Canadian government. Ethyl Corporation is an American multinational company
and it sued the Canadian government in April, 1997 under various provisions
of  NAFTA for banning the gasoline additive MMT. The Canadian government
banned MMT, because it is considered to be a dangerous toxin and has been
banned by many other countries. Ethyl was seeking nearly $350 million in
damages from Ottawa. The company said that by banning MMT, its subsidiary
Ethyl Canada Inc. of  Toronto was forced to close its operations and thus
the lawsuit for damages. This past summer, Ottawa lost the lawsuit and had
to apologize and pay 22 million Canadian dollars to Ethyl, and it also had
to reverse the ban.
----------------------

Note from BAYAN: Maude Barlow and Pao-Yu Ching were plenary speakers in the
1996 People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization convened in
Manila by BAYAN and other members of the Philippine Organizing Committee.