From notoapec at clear.net.nz Wed Jan 3 04:52:53 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 08:52:53 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1693] Mobilisations against FTAA Message-ID: <003501c074f5$9b6e98e0$1c84a7cb@notoapec> Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 00:13:54 -0500 (EST) From: "la C.L.A.C." Subject: stopftaa: Quebec 2001: Update --- CLAC UPDATE -- December 2000 --- CONTENTS: - What's happening next April 2001? - What is the FTAA? (see also WHAT IS FTAA? at bottom) - What is the CLAC? - What is CASA? - April 20th Day of Action - Carnival Against Capitalism - Other Key Dates and Events - Quebec City Consulta - January 27-28 - Caravans and Visits - Affinity Groups - Peoples' Global Action (PGA) - Other Groups - Logistical Information: Food, Housing & Transport - Legal Committee - The Border - Medical Committee - CLAC Committee and Working Group Contacts - Getting More Information - How to Help and Get Involved - Basic Contact Information - plus What is "FTAA"? WHAT'S HAPPENING NEXT APRIL 2001?: Next April 20-22, 2001, the Summit of the Americas meeting will be taking place in Quebec City (the previous two Summits were held in Miami (1994) and Santiago (1998)). The Summit brings together all the 34 leaders of North, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean (except Cuba). The Summit intends to talk about issues like hemispheric integration and migration, security and terrorism, democracy and human rights, as well as the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. The Summit of the Americas is in many ways a pre-packaged media spectacle for the leaders of the hemisphere, in a controlled atmosphere of gala dinners, cocktail parties and photo ops. Thousands of delegates and media representatives are to attend the gathering, as well as thousands of police in what will be the largest security and police operation in Canadian history. WHAT IS THE FTAA?: In simple terms, the FTAA is the planned extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the entire hemisphere (except Cuba). It's not just a geographic extension, but also an extension of the reach of big business into vast areas of public policy. The FTAA is to be fully WTO-compatible, as well as include investment sections that are identical to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The FTAA was first launched at the Miami Summit (1994) and nine negotiating groups have been actively meeting and negotiating since the Santiago Summit (1998). The proposed deadline to sign and implement the FTAA is 2005. According to Canada's Trade Minister, "The FTAA is inextricably linked to the Summit of the Americas process." Together, the Summit and the FTAA are two key ways to promote American imperialism and Canadian paternalism in Latin America. The actual negotiating of the FTAA occurs within the working groups who have most recently been meeting in Miami. These working groups in turn report to the trade ministers of their respective countries. The trade ministers meet once a year. This year's meeting is to take place in Argentina in early April, a few weeks before the Quebec City Summit. (see also WHAT IS FTAA? at bottom) WHAT IS THE CLAC?: Partially in response to the upcoming Summit of the Americas meeting, and partially to reinforce existing local networks of resistance, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (la Convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes, or CLAC) came together last April in Montreal, one full year before the Summit. The CLAC basis of unity (attached below) asserts clear opposition to capitalism, imperialism, neo-liberalism and patriarchy while asserting values of mutual aid, solidarity and genuine democracy. It is autonomous, decentralized and non-hierarchical, and rejects bureaucratic, top-down models of organizing. Respecting a diversity of tactics, the CLAC supports the use of a variety of creative initiatives, ranging from popular education to direct action. With regards to the Summit of the Americas, and the FTAA, the CLAC adopts a confrontational attitude, and rejects reformist alternatives like lobbying which cannot have a major impact on inherently anti-democratic processes. For more info about CLAC's "Projects and Initiatives", please e-mail clac@tao.ca. WHAT IS CASA?: The CLAC will be collaborating closely with the recently formed Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (le Comite d'Accueil du Sommet des Ameriques, or CASA). CASA is a Quebec City-based group, comprised of activists and organizers who are involved in local grassroots struggles. Their basis of unity includes anti-capitalism, anti-patriarchy, a refusal of hierarchies, autonomy, non-reformism and a respect for a diversity of tactics. CASA, like CLAC, meet in open, decisional, general assemblies. CLAC will be collaborating with CASA on logistics, awareness raising and other actions. CASA can be reached at their temporary e-mail address: la_casa2001@hotmail.com. APRIL 20th DAY OF ACTION: The CLAC and CASA will be working together closely in raising awareness, as well as helping to reinforce and build existing networks of resistance to capitalist globalization. We are also looking beyond April, focusing on continuing mobilizing efforts after the Quebec Summit. As well, we want to avoid the dynamic of "summit-hopping", and are encouraging local actions as much as mobilizing specifically for Quebec City. However, one major focal point will clearly be the Summit itself, particularly a Day of Action scheduled for Friday, April 20, when the Summit of the Americas is due to commence in Quebec City. The Day of Action will respect a diversity of tactics, and aims to disrupt, to the maximum extent possible, the holding of the Summit of the Americas meeting. We are encouraging as many people as possible to mobilize for direct action, in Quebec City and elsewhere, on April 20, 2001. CARNIVAL AGAINST CAPITALISM: The CLAC is also organizing a Carnival against Capitalism that is to include events in Quebec City and Montreal over the month of April, and which culminates with the Day of Action on April 20. The Carnival will include conferences, teach-ins, concerts, cabarets, workshops, street theatre, protests and direct action. The exact event schedule will be announced in the upcoming weeks and months. OTHER KEY DATES AND EVENTS: The Summit of the Americas starts in Quebec City on Friday April 20 and is due to end on the evening of Sunday, April 22. There will probably be some bilateral meetings between countries just before and after those dates. The main Summit of the Americas meeting will take place at the Quebec City Convention Center (Centre des Congres de Quebec), and country delegations will occupy practically every major hotel in downtown Quebec City. There is a scheduled photo-op for the leaders at Quebec's Citadel sometime during the weekend. The Ministers of Trade for the Americas are meeting in Buenos Aires in early April, as is the Americas Business Forum. There is also talk of a Finance Ministers meeting in Toronto some time before the Summit, perhaps in March. The mainstream NGOs and major unions are planning a legally permitted demonstration on April 21, as well as a "People's Summit" that is to take place from April 17-20. The entire week before the Summit is sure to be busy with various workshops, teach-ins, conferences, protests, marches and actions. QUEBEC CITY CONSULTA - JANUARY 27-28: Both CLAC and CASA are facilitating a consulta, or consultation, with like-minded groups and individuals in Quebec City on the weekend of January 27-28. The purpose of the consulta is to share information about the Summit, the FTAA and capitalist globalization, build networks of resistance, discuss action plans, and to familiarize out-of-towners with Quebec City as well as local groups, organizers and issues. If you are interested in participating in the consulta, please send an e-mail saying so to casa_clac_consulta@hotmail.com. CARAVANS ANDS VISITS: If you can't come to Quebec City for the consulta, members of the CLAC can come to you, if that would be useful for your own local organizing efforts. The CLAC has already organized a caravan to Ontario, and to cities and towns around Quebec and the Northeast US. These visits encompassed public presentations, workshops, alternative media interventions, as well as meetings with local groups. There are two more caravans planned in February, in collaboration with CASA, for the Maritimes and the Northeast USA. Visits can also be organized on an ad hoc basis. If you'd like to organize a visit, or a caravan stop in February in the Maritimes and USA, please e-mail clac@tao.ca ASAP. AFFINITY GROUPS: CLAC and CASA are anti-authoritarian groups that are organizing based on a respect for direct democracy and autonomy. Therefore, actions and protests in Quebec City and elsewhere will be most effective if like-minded individuals organize themselves into affinity groups that share similar perspectives and goals. It is crucial that these affinity groups be organized well in advance of April to ensure effective communications, as well as democratic decision-making. If you are part of an affinity group, don't hesitate to get in touch with the CLAC at clac@tao.ca PEOPLES' GLOBAL ACTION (PGA): The CLAC, along with the Tampa Bay Action Group in Florida, are currently the temporary co-convenors of the Peoples' Global Action (PGA) network in North America (Canada and the USA). More info on the PGA network, which is a non-reformist international network against capitalist globalization, is available at www.agp.org. The North America network of PGA is not well developed, but there is a potential North American conference that will be held in the spring. The next international PGA meeting will take place just after the Summit of the Americas, in Bolivia between April 27-May 1. For more info about PGA, contact the CLAC at clac@tao.ca. OTHER GROUPS?: Clearly, CLAC and CASA are not the only groups organizing against the Quebec Summit, nor do they claim to embody the resistance activities against the FTAA. Other groups include OQP2001 (Occupation Quebec Printemps), which is based in Quebec City and comprised of representatives of local activist and NGO groups. It is a strictly regional coalition. OQP2001, along with CASA, are two groups that will be responsible for much of the logistical organizing in Quebec City proper. OQP2001 can be reached by e-mail at info@oqp2001.org. Most NGOs and mainstream unions will be participating and mobilizing around the People's Summit, which is a "civil society" conference organized parallel to the actual Summit of the Americas, and receives a certain amount of government funding. They are also organizing a legally permitted mass demonstration during the Summit of the Americas. The Quebec contact for the People's Summit (which is part of the Hemispheric Social Alliance) is the Reseau Quebecois sur l'integration continentale (RQIC). They can be reached at rqic@alternatives.ca. The contact for the People's Summit and the Hemispheric Social Alliance in the rest of Canada is Common Frontiers -- comfront@web.ca -- that is headquartered in Toronto. Other mobilizing groups include Operation SalAMI, student efforts at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM), McGill and Concordia, and more. All efforts generally complement each other, and there is so far minimal duplication of work and focus. LOGISTICS: There have been many questions about logistical matters next April, particularly housing, food and transportation. In Quebec City, both OQP2001 and CASA are the main groups that will facilitate logistics. CLAC will be collaborating with CASA. It's also worth contacting OQP2001 at info@oqp2001.org if you have logistical inquiries. From CLAC's end, the e-mail contacts for the logistics committees are: Housing: lolicom2001@hotmail.com; Food: zobule@hotmail.com and mariec_81@hotmail.com; and Transport: steph_est@yahoo.com. LEGAL: A CLAC legal committee has formed, which aims to provide legal and jail support on all levels next April and beyond. The e-mail contact is peter@tao.ca or by phone at the CLAC number at 514-409-2049. There will be a lot more info forthcoming from this committee in the future. THE BORDER: There have been many questions from US-based activists about getting across the border, or alternatively, actions at the border. At present, the CLAC has no definitive advice to offer, beyond saying that the border does present a potential, but not insurmountable, problem. As well, there have been several potential border actions proposed. More info is forthcoming in the upcoming weeks, including advice about getting across. MEDICAL: A medical committee, which aims to provide basic first aid during actions, as well as trainings for affinity groups, has been formed within the CLAC. The English-speaking e-mail contact is out of the city until mid-January, so for now e-mail clac@tao.ca or phone 514-409-2049 for more info. COMMITTEE AND WORKING GROUP CONTACTS: It is often more efficient to send an e-mail along to a contact for the specific working group or committee you want to reach. For all the contacts below, if you prefer to use the phone, leave a specific message (identifying the working group or committee) on the CLAC telephone mailbox at 514-409-2049. Contacts include: General Inquiries: clac@tao.ca Research Collective: crac@tao.ca Housing: lolicom2001@hotmail.com Food: zobule@hotmail.com and mariec_81@hotmail.com Transportation: steph_est@yahoo.ca Agitprop: pierreantoineh@yahoo.com Cultural/Artistic Committee: mattlegrind@hotmail.com and zobule@hotmail.com Peoples' Global Action: clac@tao.ca Legal: peter@tao.ca Medical: clac@tao.ca External Liaison/Caravans: jaggi@tao.ca Media: julieeve@hotmail.com Latin America Contacts/Spanish: crassca@yahoo.ca Web Page: safechier@yahoo.fr E-mail Lists: clac@tao.ca Consulta (January 27-28): casa_clac_consulta@hotmail.com GETTING MORE INFORMATION: If you want to receive regular e-mail updates from the CLAC, please send a message to clac@tao.ca with "subscribe CLAC external updates" in the main text. If you are from the Montreal-area, or you would like to get the more frequent updates from the various working groups of the CLAC (predominantly in French, but often translated into English and Spanish), send a message to clac@tao.ca with "subscribe CLAC internal updates". If you want to be part of a moderated e-mail list that shares information about the FTAA, send an e-mail with a blank subject line to lists@tao.ca with "subscribe ftaa-l" as the main text. HOW TO HELP AND GET INVOLVED: There are various ways to help or get involved. If you live in Montreal, or you're planning on visiting sometime, the CLAC organizes regular general assemblies that are open to the public (especially people who are in accord with the CLAC basis of unity). The assemblies (until April) will be held on the evenings of January 10 and 23, February 7 and 20, March 7, 20 and 28, and April 4 and 11. There is also the Consulta in Quebec City on January 27&28. If your collective, group or organization agrees with the CLAC principles (attached below), please endorse them and let us know by e-mail, as we're trying to amplify the radical anti-capitalist resistance to the FTAA and capitalist globalization. If you would like to get involved with helping a particular CLAC working group or sub-committee (legal, medical, cultural, etc), please get in touch with them directly (contacts above). If you want to host a presentation on the FTAA, the Summit of the Americas or capitalist globalization, get in touch with the external liaison committee. If you want to be actively involved with organizing against the FTAA with the CLAC, get involved with one of our working groups, or form your own affinity group. Whatever you're doing, don't hesitate to get in touch. BASIC CONTACT INFORMATION: You can contact the CLAC by e-mail (clac@tao.ca), phone (514-409-2049), web (http://www.quebec2001.net) or post (CLAC, c/o La Librairie Alternative, 2035 boulevard St-Laurent, 2nd floor, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2T3 CANADA). We can deal with correspondence in French, English and Spanish. ========================================== CLAC BASIS OF UNITY (translation from the French) 1. The Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC in French) is opposed to capitalism. We fundamentally reject a social and economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and exchange. We reject a system driven by an exploitative logic that sees human beings as human capital, ecosystems as natural resources, and culture as simply a commodity. We reject the idea that the world is only valuable in terms of profit, competition and efficiency. 2. The CLAC also rejects the ideology of neo-liberalism, whereby corporations and investors are exempt from all political and social measures that interfere with their so-called "success". 3. The CLAC is anti-imperialist, opposed to patriarchy, and denounces all forms of exploitation and oppression. We assert a worldview based on the respect of our differences and the autonomy of groups, individuals and peoples. Our objective is to globalize our networks of resistance to corporate rule. 4. Respecting a diversity of tactics, the CLAC supports the use of a variety of creative initiatives, ranging between public education campaigns to direct action. 5. The CLAC is autonomous, decentralized and non-hierarchical. We encourage the involvement of anyone who accepts this statement of principles. We also encourage the participation of all individuals in working groups, in accord with their respective political affiliations. 6. With regards to the Summit of the Americas (April 2001) and the negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the CLAC adopts a confrontational attitude and rejects reformist alternatives such as lobbying which cannot have a major impact on anti-democratic processes. We intend to shut down the Summit of the Americas and to turn the FTAA negotiations into a non-event. e-mail: clac@tao.ca web: http://www.quebec2001.net tel: +1 514 526-8946 post: la CLAC, c/o la Librairie Alternative 2035, boulevard St-Laurent, 2nd floor Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2T3 CANADA ............................ WHAT IS FTAA? ......................... Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 12:15:18 -0800 From: Gordon Flett Organization: @Home Network Subject: (ftaa-l) FTAA: Unveiling NAFTA for the Americas http://www.tradewatch.org/FTAA/factsheet.htm UNVEILING "NAFTA FOR THE AMERICAS" NAFTA + WTO = FTAA What is "FTAA"? The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the formal name given to an expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that would include nearly all of the countries in the western hemisphere. This massive NAFTA expansion is currently being negotiated in secret by trade ministers from a total of 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the failed NAFTA model of increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide. Imposition of these rules would empower corporations to constrain governments from setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers, and to ensure corporations do not pollute the communities in which they operate. Effectively, these rules would handcuff governments' public interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the Americas. FTAA would deepen the negative effects of NAFTA we've seen in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. over the past seven years and expand NAFTA's damage to the other 31 countries involved. The FTAA would intensify NAFTA's "race to the bottom": under FTAA, exploited workers in Mexico could be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala or Brazil by companies seeking tariff-free access back into U.S. markets. A quick look at NAFTA's legacy reveals disastrous consequences: An estimated 395,000 U.S. jobs have been lost since NAFTA as companies relocated to Mexico to take advantage of the weaker labor standards. These workers usually find jobs with less security and wages that are about 77% of what they originally had. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico has become a deficit for the first time. Despite promises of increased economic development throughout Mexico, only the border region has seen intensified industrial activity. Yet even this small "gain" has not brought prosperity. Over one million more Mexicans work for less than the minimum wage of $3.40 per day today than before NAFTA, and during the NAFTA period, eight million Mexicans have fallen from the middle class into poverty. In addition, the increase of border industry has created worsening environmental and public health threats in the area. Every day, 44 tons of hazardous waste are disposed of improperly. In this time, birth defects have increased dramatically. In the first year of NAFTA in one Texas border county, 15 babies were born without brains - an unprecedented 36% increase from the year before! Along the border, the occurrence of some diseases, including hepatitis, is two or three times the national average, due to lack of sewage treatment and safe drinking water. Although it's hard to imagine that anyone would push for more of a failed model like this, what little we do know about FTAA is that is likely to look quite a bit like NAFTA. In fact, some FTAA texts are reported to be literally based on NAFTA, with additional countries added in. We know what results to expect! Who is involved in the FTAA negotiations, and how did it get started? High on their NAFTA victory, U.S. officials organized a Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994. Trade ministers from every country in the western hemisphere (except for Cuba) agreed to launch negotiations to establish a hemispheric free trade deal. After the "Miami Summit," however, little more was done on FTAA until the "Santiago Summit" in Chile in April 1998. However, at this second summit the 34 nations set up a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), consisting of vice ministers of trade from every country and headed by Dr. Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini of Argentina. Negotiators also agreed on a structure of nine working groups to deal with the major areas they agreed to cover under FTAA: agriculture, services, investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property rights, subsidies and anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement and market access. You would never know it from news reports, but since late 1999, the working groups have been meeting every few months to lay out their countries' positions on these issues and try to develop treaty language. As with the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), many Members of Congress have no idea this is even going on. Congress has set no goals for the U.S.'s participation in these talks and has not delegated to the Executive branch its Constitutional role of setting the terms of international commerce. However, a variety of corporate committees do advise the U.S. negotiators; under the trade advisory committee system, over 500 corporate representatives have security clearance and access to FTAA NAFTA expansion documents. Organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), collectively known as the "Tripartite Committee," also provide direction. Early on, non-governmental civil society organizations (NGOs) demanded working groups on democratic governance, labor and human rights, consumer safety and the environment. These were rejected, and instead a Committee of Government Representatives on Civil Society was established to represent the views of civil society to the TNC. Yet this committee is little more than a mail in-box. It has no mechanism to incorporate civil society concerns and suggestions into the actual negotiations, so these are mainly ignored. The U.S. is represented by the U.S. Trade Representative's office (USTR), headed by Charlene Barshefsky as of November 2000. The lead USTR negotiator on FTAA is Peter Allgeier. What will FTAA's practical effects be? Because negotiations are occurring in secret and no texts have been made publicly available, we cannot know the details of the draft text. However, our conversations with the USTR have given us some clues about what to expect once a final agreement is unveiled - in other words, once it's too late to change it! Essential Social Services Endangered: The FTAA will contain a series of commitments to "liberalize" services, which is much like the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) within the WTO. "Services" is a broad category that includes education, health care, environmental services (which can include access to water!), energy, postal services and anything else we pay for that isn't a physical object. Possible effects of the FTAA services agreement include: Removal of national licensing standards for medical, legal and other key professionals, allowing doctors licensed in one country to practice in any country, even if their level of training or technological sophistication is different; privatization of public schools and prisons in the U.S., opening the door to greater corporate control, corruption and the temptation to cut critical corners (such as medical care for inmates or upkeep of safe school facilities) in the interests of improving profit margins; and privatization of postal services transferring U.S. Postal Service functions to a few delivery companies like FedEx, which could then send postal rates through the roof. Investment and a Backdoor MAI: FTAA NAFTA expansion provides a potential "back door" for the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), through negotiations focused on investments and in the financial services sector. We didn't call the MAI "NAFTA on steroids" for nothing! MAI is based on NAFTA and direct NAFTA expansion is just another way to impose these rules. Like in NAFTA's Chapter 11, the USTR says that FTAA will include "investor-to-state" suits. These allow corporations to sue governments directly for the removal of standards or laws designed to protect public health and safety, which may cost the corporations a little more in operating costs. In other words, the FTAA would provide a hemispheric "regulatory takings" clause that explicitly values corporate profits over human costs. NAFTA cases that set a likely precedent for FTAA actions under this provision include: The Canadian funeral home chain Loewen Group used NAFTA investor protections to sue the U.S. government for $750 million in cash damages after a Mississippi court found Loewen guilty of malicious and fraudulent practices that unfairly targeted a local small business. (NAFTA permits companies to sue governments over rulings or regulations that may potentially limit their profits.) Loewen argues that the very existence of the state court system violates its NAFTA rights. The U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation forced Canada to pay $13 million in damages and drop its ban on the dangerous gasoline additive MMT, a known toxin that attacks the human nervous system. Other regulations protecting public health and the environment remain open for attack under NAFTA and FTAA. In a similar case, U.S.-based Metalclad Corp. sued a Mexican state to allow a toxic waste disposal site, claiming that the environmental zoning law forbidding the dump constituted an effective seizure of the company's property ? a seizure that, under the property rights extended by NAFTA (and to be perpetuated in FTAA), requires that the offending government compensate the company. Food, Agriculture & GMOs: The U.S. is trying to force all countries to accept biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) foods in which unregulated U.S.-based corporations have taken a lead. Yet food security organizations all over the world agree that these technologies will increase hunger in poor nations. Being forced to buy expensive patented seeds every season, rather than saving and planting their own, will force traditional subsistence farmers in the developing world into dependency on transnational corporations and closer to the brink of starvation. If the U.S. position wins out, FTAA will promote the interests of biotech and agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill and Monsanto over the interests of hungry people in developing nations. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR): The U.S. is trying to expand NAFTA's corporate protectionism rules on patents to the whole hemisphere. These rules give a company with a patent in one country the monopoly marketing rights to the item throughout the region. These rules are enforced with cash fines and criminal penalties, making these rules even harsher than the WTO IPR rules. These rules have been used as justification for pharmaceutical companies to quash compulsory licensing mechanisms to allow competitor companies to manufacture a drug in exchange for a fee for "renting" the patent. This monopoly control allows pharmaceutical corporations to keep drug prices high and block production of generic versions of life-saving drugs, which spells disaster for the ill and impoverished, especially in developing nations. These rules also allow companies to "bioprospect" and lock down patents for traditional medicines that are considered "traditional knowledge," effectively robbing indigenous people of their cultural heritage to fatten corporate wallets. What is the current status of the FTAA negotiations? All the negotiating groups have held meetings at two to three month intervals throughout 2000. Negotiators have laid out the positions of their governments on the nine core issues. As of fall 2000, they are in the process of consolidating proposed text to find points of agreement among the governments. A complete "bracketed" (draft) text will be ready in December 2000. Vice ministerial level meetings on FTAA NAFTA expansion will begin in early 2001. The next ministerial-level Summit of the Americas is planned for Quebec City, Canada on April 20-22, 2001, at which negotiators will start building a whole text. The agreement is to be complete and implemented in 2005. ---------------------------- ftaa-l ----------------------------- resisting the FTAA and capitalist globalization mobilizing for Quebec City, April 2001 creating alternatives ----- to subscribe to this list, send a message to: with the following text only: subscribe zlea-l is the corresponding French language list, while alca-l is both the Spanish and Portuguese list. ---------------------------- ftaa-l ----------------------------- From notoapec at clear.net.nz Thu Jan 4 03:45:04 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 07:45:04 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1694] Fw: Bilateral deals: WTO in danger? Message-ID: <001401c075b5$4dd048c0$e584a7cb@notoapec> > >Tuesday, January 02, 2001, 12:00 a.m. Pacific > > > >Is WTO in danger? > >by Stephen H. Dunphy > >Seattle Times business columnist > > > >The Seattle Times > >A fork-lift driver at Container Care International in Seattle moves a > >container ready to be delivered to a shipping line. > >WTO MEMBER NATIONS increasingly are negotiating trade deals outside the > >world organization, which calls into question the WTO's future. > > > >A year after global trade talks collapsed here, a new pattern of > >negotiations is emerging that could pose a greater threat to the World > >Trade Organization than even the wildest hopes of its opponents. > > > >Increasingly, the 140 members of the WTO are entering into smaller-scale > >trade accords among themselves, or are pushing ahead with plans to do so. > >As a result, the WTO estimates those agreements now cover as much as > >three-quarters of world trade, and market barriers are dropping from East > >Asia to Latin America. > > > >Mike Moore, the director general of the global trading body, warned > >recently that there is a "growing danger" that the surge in trade > >agreements "could come to be seen as a substitute for multilateral > >liberalization rather than a complement to it." > > > >The U.S. alone has signed accords with China, Jordan and Vietnam in recent > >months, and is negotiating with Chile and Singapore. It has opened its > >markets to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean Basin, and next April will > >consider forming a Free Trade Area of the Americas - a tariff-free zone > >that would cover the entire Western Hemisphere, from Canada to Argentina. > > > >Last week, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky praised the deal > >with Jordan, calling it a model for how bilateral accords could help > >protect the environment and ensure labor standards are followed. > > > >Japan has abandoned its long-standing policy of multilateral-only trade > >liberalization to consider agreements with Singapore and Korea, while the > >European Union is in the process of establishing a Euro-Mediterranean > >free-trade area by 2010. > > > >Some experts like the bilateral deals because trade is booming. The World > >Bank said trade will expand 12.5 percent this year - the fastest growth in > >more than three decades. The WTO estimates trade growth this year at more > >than 10 percent. > > > >While some regional pacts can be good, they run risks. Trade economists say > >regional trade pacts can result in one country granting preferences to > >another and buying goods from it that should really be purchased elsewhere. > > > >That could have a huge impact on big trading ports. The Port of Seattle had > >at least some trade with more than 150 countries or regions last year, > >ranging from $27.5 billion with Japan to $7 million with Moldova. > > > >Moore and WTO officials argue that the system in place since the end of > >World War II has worked well and should not be abandoned. The facts seem to > >point that way. Trade is up 16 fold since then, growing every year since 1945. > > > >The free movement of goods and services across borders saves the average > >consumer in the U.S. about $2,000 a year. Countries like South Korea have > >moved from poverty with per capita annual income of less than $100 to the > >ranks of the wealthy developed countries in a generation, largely through > >the ability to trade. > > > >But these bilateral agreements - deals between two countries - are being > >looked at more and more by big nations, especially the U.S. and the > >European Union. The deals allow them to get things it wants - agreements on > >labor standards and the environment - which it cannot get in bigger > >multilateral deals. > > > >Even disputes are moving outside the WTO. > > > >The U.S. may challenge how Airbus uses government loans to finance its > >proposed A380, a super jumbo that would compete with Boeing's 747. > > > >U.S. and EU trade officials discussed the financing during high-level > >meetings in Washington this week. > > > >But both sides - and Boeing - do not want the dispute to become a > >full-blown trade battle. > > > >In addition to the list of country-to-country agreements regional > >agreements are growing as well. Among them: > > > >Mercosur, the free-trade area that includes Brazil, Argentina and other > >Latin American countries, is negotiating to add Chile to its membership. > > > >The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proposed an East Asia > >free-trade zone, while Australia and New Zealand are seeking to open Asian > >agriculture markets. > > > >Mexico has signed accords with the EU and the smaller European Free Trade > >Area. And the Andean and Central American common markets have reaffirmed > >their commitments to regional free trade. > > > >The growth in regional trade accords could help build the political case in > >the U.S. to push again on multilateral-trade negotiations. Starting a new > >round of global trade talks won't be easy. > > > >The WTO meetings in Seattle failed partly over a U.S. proposal to include > >labor and environmental standards in future trade accords. > > > >That plan was supported by many of the tens of thousands of street > >protesters who tried to shut down the meetings. > > > >Yet it drew fire from developing nations, which saw it as a veiled attempt > >to deprive them of their chief competitive advantage: low labor costs. > > > >China's imminent accession to the WTO might also complicate things. > > > >China is "big enough by itself that we need some time to concentrate on > >it," one official said. "Integrating 1.5 billion people into the system > >will be a huge boost to world trade" on its own. > > > >Negotiations under way at the WTO in two areas - agriculture and services - > >are likely to run into resistance early next year. > > > >"When horse trading begins in earnest in agriculture and services, we are > >likely to experience a sharp slowdown," said one WTO official. "Up until > >now, the work of those negotiating groups has gone well, but we have > >largely been in a phase of both information gathering and presentation of > >offers. It will not be until March that the real dealing is due to start." > > > >Meanwhile, the bilateral deal making continues. The U.S. and Singapore are > >near an agreement on a free-trade pact. > > > >Information from Bloomberg News was included in this report. Dunphy > >traveled to WTO headquarters earlier this fall. > > > > > >Copyright ? 2000 The Seattle Times Company From amittal at foodfirst.org Fri Jan 5 03:18:55 2001 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 10:18:55 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1695] Job Announcement at Food First: Senior Analyst Message-ID: <0.700000824.1388962837-951758591-978632335@topica.com> Job Announcement Senior Analyst/Economist Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy is a progressive, independent, non-profit think tank engaged in analysis, research, advocacy, and education-for-action on hunger and poverty, environmental degradation, and alternative development policies for the Third World and for the U.S. (www.foodfirst.org). The Senior Analyst/Economist will conduct economic-social research, analysis, writing, public speaking, media appearances and networking for our two principles program areas, Economic and Social Human Rights Program, and Re-Shaping the Global Food System. Responsibilities include: • Provide senior level support to both programs. • Conduct economic-social research on issues such as welfare reform, hunger, underemployment, agriculture, corporate concentration in the food system, impacts of trade policy and economic globalization in the U.S.; and land reform, small farm productivity, trade and agriculture policy, rural development, poverty, alternative food systems, and impacts of globalization and structural adjustment in the third world.  • Produce analytical reports putting forth and justifying Food First's positions on these issues. • Put forth alternative policy options consistent with Food First values and mission. • Write for a variety of audiences, from academics and policy makers to activists and the general public. • Speak on behalf of Food First in a variety of public foras and in the media. • Help develop networks of collaborators, partner organizations, funders, etc. Qualifications include: Should have substantial experience in similar work, preferably with a graduate degree in a related field (ideally a Ph.D. or M.A. with comparable experience in economics), must have a proven record of excellence in research, analysis, writing for diverse audiences, public speaking and media work, networking, and substantial experience as an activist for social change.  Must have demonstrated commitment to the values and mission of Food First, must be a cooperative, energetic and collaborative team player, must have leadership qualities, must be comfortable in writing for and speaking to diverse audiences, and must be flexible, willing and interested to work on diverse issues as described above.  Must be able to juggle multiple projects simultaneously.  Name recognition/reputation as 'expert,' a plus. Salary commensurate with experience.   Letter, cv, 3 references and writing samples to Hiring Committee, Food First, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA, 94618, USA. -- Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst@foodfirst.org. ____________________________________________________________ T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics Manage your email with MyTopica: http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01/my From notoapec at clear.net.nz Sat Jan 6 19:31:47 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 23:31:47 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1696] Fw: CHILE: MAPUCHE CLASH WITH POLICE, LUMBER COMPANY Message-ID: <002a01c077cb$e0705ae0$e0cca7cb@notoapec> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 7:56 PM Subject: CHILE: MAPUCHE CLASH WITH POLICE, LUMBER COMPANY > CHILE: MAPUCHE CLASH WITH POLICE, LUMBER COMPANY > > At 6am on Dec. 22, troops from the Carabineros (militarized > police) Special Forces began the violent eviction of members of > five Mapuche indigenous commmunities from the El Carmen estate > near Temuco, which the communities had been occupying since Dec. > 19. The land is claimed by the Forestal Bosques Arauco logging > company. The troops used tear gas and fired shots into the air; > the Mapuche responded with sticks and rocks. There were no > arrests. Lumber workers and heavy machinery arrived soon > afterwards to clear away barricades made of logs which the > Mapuche had set up to block the company's access to the land. [La > Tercera (Santiago) 12/22/00, 12/27/00] > > Conflicts continued through the following week. The Mapuche > insist they have a historic claim to the El Carmen estate. > Forestal Bosques Araco has planted the land with eucalyptus trees > and is now attempting to harvest the lumber; the Carabineros were > sent in to ensure that workers could finish the job. > > New incidents broke out on Dec. 26, when nearly 40 hooded > individuals attacked about 100 Carabineros agents with sticks, > rocks and Molotov bombs at the El Carmen estate, and agents hit > back with tear gas. Isaac Vergara, governor of the Ninth Region, > suggested that the hooded individuals may have been agitators, > rather than Mapuche community members. [LT 12/27/00] From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Tue Jan 9 01:26:20 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 08:26:20 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1697] China's Liberalization Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010108082620.007acdb0@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> Specific WTO demands for China's agriculture and textile sectors, Part II This second piece in a two-part series explores in-depth how WTO accession will affect tariffs and exports in a few of China?s most important sectors. By William Martin, Elena Ianchovichina and Emiko Fukase The World Bank (13 December 2000) A comprehensive assessment of the implications of accession for trade barriers requires a comparison of the protection prevailing after accession to what would have prevailed in the absence of accession. Given the rapid changes in China?s protection rates since the early 1990s, it is obviously not clear what the counterfactual rate of protection would have been. In general, we assume that the rate of protection applying in 1997 would have continued to apply in the absence of accession. We then estimate the protection applying after accession as the lesser of the initial applied rate and the bound rates of protection agreed in the WTO. In agriculture, we need to take a more careful look at the situation for those products subject to Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs). The reform scenario Following accession to the WTO, China will retain the tariff rate quota system for a small set of agricultural commodities: wheat, corn, rice, oilseeds, sugar, wool and cotton. Other products will be subject to a pure tariff system. China has agreed not to use export subsidies, although it could presumably levy export taxes on some commodities. Thus, the only protection that China will be able to provide to its agricultural sector will be that provided through tariffs; protecting export-oriented commodities will be ruled out. The protection to an importable commodity by a tariff rate quota system depends critically on whether import demand at the in-quota tariff rate is above or below the TRQ level. If import demand falls below the TRQ level, imports are subject to the in-quota tariff. If imports exceed the TRQ level, they are subject to the out-of-quota tariff. The most important impact of WTO accession is on China?s output of apparel: production rises by 263.5 percent. >From analysis of various figures, it is clear that there has been a consistent upward trend in import levels of each of the aforementioned commodities, with considerable volatility around this trend. Whether the in- or out-of-quota tariff applies depends on whether the volume of imports exceeds the quota. Some numbers highlight the substantial nature of the tariff offer for industrial products. On average, tariffs on imported manufactures in China drop from 24.27 percent to about 7 percent. Protection of textiles and apparel products fall dramatically (from 57.1 percent to 9.39 percent), as does protection of automobiles (from 129.1 percent to 13.7 percent), electronics (from 21.69 percent to 3.44 percent), and petrochemicals (from 20.17 percent to 6.94 percent). The sharp decline in protection of electronics is undoubtedly related to China?s agreement to implement the Information Technology Agreement as part of its accession package. The actual reduction in protection of the automobile sector is even larger than is suggested by these tariff results, since quota protection to this sector is also to be phased out. Overall, China?s offer lowers the weighted average tariff protection on imports to the country from 21.41 percent to a mere 7.85 percent. Growth in the work force China?s economy seems likely to continue growing at a relatively high rate in the early years of the new century, and this process of growth will cause substantial changes in the composition of output. In addition, the liberalization associated with WTO accession is likely to have important implications for the structure of output, and the orientation of production between domestic and international markets. To evaluate the impact of the latest available offer (which is based on the November 1999 agreement with the United States), we assess the likely future growth in China?s economy. The rate of growth in the work force in China is projected to slightly outpace the growth of the population over the projection period, although not greatly because much of the demographic dividend1 resulting from the sharp decline in the Chinese birthrate has now passed. Most important for the growth and structure of the economy are the very high projected growth rates for skilled labor and for physical capital. This augmentation of physical and human capital can be expected to have profound implications for growth and structural change. There is some uncertainty regarding the estimated growth rate for skilled workers, and this element of the projection may require revisiting. Projected increases for exports Under the baseline scenario for textiles, tariff rates on all industrial products are held constant, and the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) quotas are projected to grow at the rates determined in each country?s agreements. Tariff rates on agricultural products are also held constant, in line with the move to tariffication in the Uruguay Round. Since the MFA quota growth rates for WTO members are subject to quota growth rate acceleration but those for nonmembers such as China are not, the MFA quota growth rates become an increasing burden for China in the absence of WTO accession. The implications of China?s liberalization due to accession and its growth till 2005 provide the basis for a number of interesting conclusions. The first one is the rapid growth in China?s shares of world output and exports even in the absence of WTO accession. Without accession, China?s share of world output is projected to increase between 1995 and 2005 from 3.38 percent to 5.26 percent, and its share of exports from 3.71 percent to 4.78 percent. While the accession offer has almost no impact on the share of output, it has an enormous impact on the share of trade. With the implementation of the accession offer, China?s share of world export markets rises to 6.76 percent, and of world import markets, to 6.61 percent. Textiles At the sectoral level, the most important impact of accession is on China?s output of apparel. Production of apparel rises by 263.5 percent over the same 10-year period, compared to 57 percent in the baseline. It also results in an increase in China?s share of world output of apparel, from 8.84 percent in the baseline to 20.10 percent in the case of accession. This share rises dramatically because of the lifting of the burdens imposed by the MFA on China?s exports, and by China?s protection on the cost structure of the industry. China?s apparel exports also increase dramatically rising by 375 percent over the decade, compared to 45 percent in the case of no accession, for the same reason. As a result China?s share of world export markets for apparel also increases substantially, to more than 47 percent. The expansion of the apparel sector stimulates input demand for imported textiles, which increase by 272 percent by 2005. How other sectors fare The automobiles sector, and a number of high-tech sectors, experience very substantial increases in their exports under the accession scenario, as their costs are reduced following liberalization. Despite this increase in exports, the output of the automobiles sector contracts in the case of access, as protection to this sector falls dramatically as well. The projection results suggest that between 1995 and 2005 the wages of unskilled workers in China are going to grow twice as fast as the wages of skilled workers. This is expected given China?s growth of unskilled labor over the same period is 12 percent compared to 43 percent for skilled labor.2 The expansion of the wearing apparel sector under accession is projected to increase demand for labor in China over the decade. Other big employers of both skilled and unskilled labor under accession include agriculture, extractive industries, electronics and construction. The high-tech sectors among which petrochemicals and other manufactures are projected to increase demand for skilled labor only. The increase in demand for labor under accession translates into a slightly higher growth in wages under accession compared to the baseline. It is likely that this slight strengthening of the market for labor would have favorable impacts on inequality and poverty.3 Agriculture On the import side, China becomes a much bigger market for its trading partners following accession to the WTO. Despite the fact that China?s protection of the agricultural sectors is assumed to remain largely unchanged, China increases its agricultural imports of oilseeds, meat and various food products. This increase in the importance of agricultural imports reflects the strong shift in comparative advantage away from agriculture implied by the baseline growth scenario. This structural change is an outcome of successful economic development. It is also a sign of improved food security of the population in the sense of people?s ability to acquire the food they need. It is associated with growth in agricultural production in addition to positive growth in agricultural imports and a decline in agricultural exports. Conclusions The trade reforms associated with China?s accession to WTO are part of a long-term movement to greater openness and integration into the world economy. Their full effects can only be understood if they are considered in the context of China?s existing trade policies, and particularly the important duty exemptions provided for processing trade. China has committed to make substantial reductions in the tariffs applying on manufactures trade?a set of reductions that we estimate will reduce the weighted average tariffs applied on these products from 24 percent in 1997 to 7 percent after the accession commitments are fully phased in. In agriculture, it is much more difficult to ascertain the extent of any liberalization. In the long run, however, it is likely that accession will help China retain an efficient agricultural sector. Another important aspect of liberalization will be the phase-out of the MFA quotas that have hampered China?s textile and clothing sector. With accession, China?s share of world exports rises from 3.7 percent in 1995 to more than 6.8 percent. While accession has a large impact on China?s export shares, its effect is smaller than it was in earlier analyses where we had omitted the effects of duty exemption schemes in the base. At the sectoral level, the most important impact of accession is on the apparel market, where China increases its share of world export markets to 47 percent. While enormous, this is much smaller than estimates obtained previously without taking the implications of tariff exemptions into account. In our analysis, accession appears to have favorable impacts on the demand for both skilled and unskilled labor. This follows from the expansion of labor-intensive sectors such as clothing, modest expansions in some labor-intensive agricultural sectors such as meat production. Due to further lowering of the trade distortions under the new offer, China?s gains from joining the WTO will be magnified as a result of the improved efficiency of the Chinese economy and increased investment flow into the region. Click here to read Part I of "Specific WTO demands for China's agriculture and textile sectors." About the author: William Martin is the acting research manager at the World Bank Group, where his current responsibilities include managing research on trade policy issues. He can be reached at Wmartin1@worldbank.org. This paper was prepared and presented for the World Bank?s discussions on the WTO and is reprinted here with the authors? permission. Notes: 1.Bloom, D. and Williamson, J. G. 1998. "Demographic transitions and economic miracles in emerging Asia," World Bank Economic Review, 12(3):419-56. 2. Ahuja, and Filmer, D. 1995. "Educational attainment in developing countries: New estimates and projections disaggregated by gender," Policy Research Working Paper 1489, World Bank. 3. Wang, Zhi and Fan, Zhai 1998. "Tariff reduction, tax replacement, and implications for income distribution in China," Journal of Comparative Economics 26:358-87. --------------------------------------------------- Aaron James 204-339 East 7th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5L 1M9 Phone: aaronj@interchange.ubc.ca http://members.tripod.com/aaronjeromewestjames/ --------------------------------------------------- From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Fri Jan 12 03:03:32 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 10:03:32 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1698] Politician urges Asian union Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010111100332.007ee470@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> Politician urges Asian union ASSOCIATED PRESS Jan 10, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Singapore on Monday proposed an Asia-wide bloc similar to the European Union, saying the region must work together to thrive in an increasingly technological world. Yeo Cheow Tong, minister for communications and information technology, said Asia should build a model of ''regionalism'' similar to the European Union's, but not necessarily of the same ''brand''. Asian leaders have often said that their idea of regionalism is purely economic, unlike Europe's which includes political and human rights issues. Yet even economic integration in Asia isn't nearly as advanced as Europe's, with much work still do be done before free-trade zones are created. ''We in Asia are nowhere near the level of European regionalism,'' Mr Yeo said during a Japan-Singapore symposium in the Southeast Asian city-state. He added that it was ''crucial'' for Asia to create a similar regional marketplace. Despite Asia's ''distinct and segregated countries,'' Mr Yeo said the region's nations faced ''similar, serious problems, which increasingly cannot be solved internally.'' Wealthier nations in Asia should share their know-how with developing nations to keep them falling behind. ''Afterall, why reinvent the wheel a hundred times over,'' he said. Mr Yeo defended Singapore's relentless pursuit of bilateral free trade agreements and said other Asian countries should do the same. Singapore, which recently concluded a free-trade deal with New Zealand and is working on others with the United States and Mexico, has been accused of pursuing bilateral free trade agreements at the expense of multilateral free-trade agreements in Southeast Asia. Mr Yeo said an Asian union would help the region better face the challenges and opportunities presented by globalisation. He said Asian countries needed to help each other to narrow the digital divide and to stop talented Asians from heading West. --------------------------------------------------- Aaron James 204-339 East 7th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5L 1M9 Phone: aaronj@interchange.ubc.ca http://members.tripod.com/aaronjeromewestjames/ --------------------------------------------------- From notoapec at clear.net.nz Sat Jan 13 03:48:30 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 07:48:30 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1699] US Trade Representative chosen Message-ID: <001a01c07cc8$439deaa0$e984a7cb@notoapec> >From World Bank Development News, Friday January 12, 2001 US TRADE NEGOTIATOR CHOSEN. Robert Zoellick, under-secretary of state for economics in the previous Bush administration, has been named by President-elect George W. Bush as US trade representative, while Bush stressed that free trade was at the heart of his foreign policy priorities, says the FT (pp. 1& 4). The position is a full cabinet member despite speculation that it might be downgraded. Robert Zoellick brings extensive experience to the job, including work for James Baker in the mid-1980s. Among Mr. Bush's commitments on trade policy is to "forge ahead with free trade negotiations, including extending NAFTA throughout the Americas", says the FT. Zoellick has criticized the Clinton administration for providing only rhetorical support for these goals and being constrained by its supporters among unions and environmental groups, particularly at the WTO's 1999 tallks in Seattle, the paper says. In other nomination news, the WSJE reports Bush met with Stephen Goldsmith, mentioned to head the proposed White House "office of Faith-based programs" that would coordinate government assistance to religious organizations that provide social services. The New York Times (p.A4) reports that US Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the most powerful critic of foreign aid in Congress, said yesterday that he would champion an increase in international assistance-but only if all future US aid was funneled to the needy through private charities and religious groups instead of a government agency. Helms said he modeled his proposal after President-elect Bush's campaign theme of empowering private relief groups to help the poor. If adopted by the administration and Congress, Helms' plan would mark the most decisive shift in 40 years in how America helps the world's downtrodden, the story says. From notoapec at clear.net.nz Sun Jan 14 12:28:11 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 16:28:11 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1700] New USTR, Robert Zoellick Message-ID: <000c01c07dda$093e6340$2084a7cb@notoapec> NATIONAL POST, CANADA January 12, 2001 New U.S. trade representative faces softwood imbroglio Zoellick said to be knowledgeable regarding Canada Peter Morton Financial Post WASHINGTON - At least Robert Zoellick, the new U.S. Trade Representative, knows there is a country north of the U.S. border. "He knows quite a bit about Canada," said Chip Roh, a former U.S. trade negotiator. "Well, let's say he's much more aware about Canada than the average American." Mr. Zoellick was chosen yesterday by George W. Bush, the President-elect, to replace Charlene Barshefsky, the Democratic appointee. He will find his first major task in March is to sort out a bitter, two-decade old clash between Canada and the United States over softwood lumber. Mr. Bush, who has come under some criticism for his apparent ignorance of the United States' largest trading partner, went out of his way yesterday to try to re-assure both NAFTA partners he will pay attention. "Neighbours to the south of us and to the north of us won't be an afterthought of foreign policy or economic policy," he said. Mr. Roh said the new trade representative, who must be confirmed by Congress, was part of the original Canada-U.S. trade negotiations more than a decade ago when he was an advisor to James Baker, the former secretary of state, and later was a part of the NAFTA talks as under-secretary of state. Mr. Zoellick,47, also served as the U.S. representative to the G7 Economic Summits in the early 1990s under George Bush, the former president. In the end, Mr. Bush did not change the status of the U.S. trade representative, which has been at the Cabinet level. Earlier he had hinted he would downgrade the key trade post to give more clout to Don Evans, who has been nominated for the Department of Commerce. The suggestion of a downgrading prompted criticism from Ms. Barshefsky, who leaves her post on Jan. 20, and other Democratic Cabinet ministers, because it would make it more difficult for the United States to negotiate seriously with other countries. The most difficult chore for Mr. Zoellick, who has been described as "a bit intense" and sometimes hard to deal with, will be convincing a badly split Congress to give him fast-track negotiating authority. Congress must approve the special authority before the administration can sign any binding trade agreements. In the last years of his administration, Bill Clinton was repeatedly denied the special authority, stalling negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and helping to sink a new launch of global trade talks in Seattle in November, 1999. Mr. Roh said Mr. Bush will likely have a better chance than Mr. Clinton in convincing Congress to approve fast-track authority since Mr. Bush does not endorse the controversial labour and environment side agreements that were to be attached to any new trade pacts. Mr. Zoellick will be handed the thorny file of the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber issue with a five-year truce expiring at the end of the March. The U.S. lumber industry, which claims the provincial governments subsidize lumber exports, is threatening to demand Canada be hit with import duties if a new deal is not struck. The United States is also probing the Canadian Wheat Board, accusing it of being a monopoly that deliberately underprices Canadian wheat to steal U.S. markets. As well, it is unhappy about the way the provinces price milk sold in international markets. A Harvard Law School graduate, Mr. Zoellick has long been involved with the Republican Party, most recently going to Tallahassee with Mr. Baker to sort out problems over the Florida recount. Mr. Zoellick was until 1997 vice-president of Fannie Mae, a former government-run mortgage company that is now the largest private housing investor in the United States. He was also president of the Center for Security and International Studies, a Washington think-tank that is one of the few to have a special Canadian studies section, but resigned during the recent presidential campaign. pmorton@nationalpost.com ********** January 12, 2001 Man in the News: A Tested Negotiator for Trade - Robert Bruce Zoellick By JOSEPH KAHN for the New York Times WASHINGTON, Jan. 11  A visitor to Robert B. Zoellick's seventh- floor office in the State Department in the early 1990's might have mistaken the young diplomat for a college prankster. He stacked his coffee table with a parody of Time magazine and a picture book of rat-eating snakes. Felt posters of poker-playing dogs lined the walls. But that sophomoric sense of humor  friends say Mr. Zoellick decorated his office that way to tease the gray-suited dignitaries who called on him  is about the only thing impish about the man President-elect George W. Bush named today as his chief trade representative. People who worked with Mr. Zoellick, 47, during two earlier Republican administrations describe him as a policy wonk whose sharp-edged negotiating tactics and mastery of details often won over, or wore down, his rivals  notably over the past several weeks as he lobbied for the trade job and its role within the new administration. A confidant of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, he rallied Western allies to back a speedy German reunification and finagled a compromise that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization. "He was the most impressive thinker of my time in government," said Richard Burt, a former assistant secretary of state. Derek H. Burney, Canada's former ambassador to the United States, called Mr. Zoellick a sharp-elbowed negotiator, but added, "in the end he won the argument through the power of his intellect, not the raw political power of the U.S." In tapping Mr. Zoellick, Mr. Bush chose a Republican insider whose resume reads a little like an encyclopedia of diplomatic and economic abbreviations  NATO, W.T.O., Nafta, G-7, APEC and Uruguay Round  are among the many trade, military and economic groups, summits and negotiating forums in which he had a role. That experience, though broad, was a largely behind-the-curtains preparation for what he will face as United States trade representative. If confirmed, Mr. Zoellick (pronounced ZELL-ik) will occupy a post that arguably has a higher public profile and more sensitive political mission than ever before. Mr. Zoellick will have to implement Mr. Bush's campaign pledge to work toward eliminating the remaining barriers to free trade throughout the Americas. He will also have to address mounting discontent among developing nations, some of which contend that the United States and other wealthy countries have betrayed free trade by refusing to dismantle import barriers that protect farm goods, textiles and steel. "The overarching issue for him is going to be restoring American leadership of free trade," said Harold McGraw III, the chief executive officer of McGraw Hill Companies, who serves as chairman of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a lobbying group. The politics are complex. Lawmakers are split almost evenly on the wisdom of expanding trade, and unions have energized their members to oppose many trade agreements. Some Bush advisers view the task of building a consensus for free trade as so essential that they considered selecting Richard W. Fisher, a Democrat who is the No. 2 trade official in the Clinton administration, for the top trade post. The Bush transition team also thought about stripping the trade representative of the cabinet rank the position has held for 25 years to streamline the way the administration managed the economy. In the end, Mr. Zoellick had his way. People who know him said he pushed for the trade post and argued passionately that the trade representative should continue to sit with the cabinet. That things worked out in his favor stems partly from his public-policy credentials, his supporters said, and his circle of friends, which includes several prominent Democrats. But he also cashed in some chits from his lengthy service to the Bush family. Under his mentor, Mr. Baker, Mr. Zoellick helped run two campaigns for President George Bush. Mr. Zoellick earned the nickname "the adding machine" for his number- crunching contribution to policy ideas that addressed what the elder Bush once called "the vision thing." Mr. Zoellick served the president- elect in a similar way. He became one of Mr. Bush's foreign policy pundits, writing a stream of op-ed pieces and magazine articles that laid the groundwork for what he called a Republican foreign policy. He dissected what he saw as President Clinton's mistakes in dealings with China, Russia, Iraq and Japan. He pushed the theme that the new administration should avoid nation- building exercises like the United States role in Haiti and Somalia and in the Balkans, an idea Mr. Bush used in his debates with Vice President Al Gore. Robert Bruce Zoellick grew up in Naperville, Ill., near Chicago. He attended Naperville Central High School and then moved East, attending Swarthmore College before receiving law and public policy degrees at Harvard University. Mr. Zoellick joined the Reagan administration at the behest of Richard Darman, one of his former Harvard teachers who at the time served in the Treasury Department. He went on to become a close aide to Mr. Baker, working for him in the Treasury Department and then, during President Bush's term, at the State Department, where he became an under secretary for economic policy. There, aside from his kitschy office, he was remembered for toting around yellow legal pads filled to the margins with his tidy penmanship, diligently laying out the pros and cons of strategy choices. "He was the best prepared guy in the room," said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador and State Department official. "He often had an outside-the-box solution for many issues." But he is most widely remembered in foreign policy circles for being the United States' representative at the multiparty negotiation over the future of divided Germany. He persuaded the Bush administration to embrace German unity despite the qualms of allies and alarm in the former Soviet Union. By defusing the potentially volatile issue of Germany, Mr. Djerejian said, Mr. Zoellick "gets a lot of credit for the fact that the cold war ended with a whimper." From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Tue Jan 16 03:47:37 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 10:47:37 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1701] (no title) Message-ID: <4.3.1.0.20010115104646.00b94b90@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> Malaysian Trade Mission to Visit Canada Malaysia's Minister of International Trade and Investment, Dutak Seri Rafidah Aziz, will lead a trade and investment mission to Canada and the US next month. The trade mission will focus on new market opportunities and increasing investment in Malaysia in several industries including information technology, electronics and engineering. From viktor at skyinet.net Thu Jan 18 16:29:52 2001 From: viktor at skyinet.net (viktor@skyinet.net) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:29:52 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1702] URGENT APPEAL TO HELP SAVE PHILIPPINE DEMOCRACY Message-ID: <3A669B70.66741C09@skyinet.net> URGENT APPEAL TO HELP SAVE PHILIPPINE DEMOCRACY It is now our turn to issue an urgent appeal to you in the international community to help defend democracy in the Philippines. On Tuesday night, the Philippine Senate impeachment court voted 11-10 against opening sealed bank documents that public prosecutors said would prove that Philippine President Joseph Estrada had amassed P3.3 billion in a secret account with the bank. The prosecutors said the sealed envelope would provide some of the most damaging evidence yet that the President -who is accused of bribery, graft and corrupt practices, betrayal of trust and culpable violation of the Constitution - acquired ill-gotten wealth through bribes and kickbacks after only 18 months in office. The defense adamantly claimed that the bank account was not included in the Articles of Impeachment. Already, the Senate vote is interpreted by many as a "vote of acquittal" for Estrada. Thousands took to the streets just after the vote to express their indignation. Public trust in the impeachment trial has been significantly eroded. There is talk of disregarding whatever the trial will result to and instead to pursue the oust-Estrada struggle in the streets. A Peoples Power Revolution Part II has been called by the Church and the democratic Opposition. Rumors of a coup are in the air, while Filipinos are now bitterly divided into pro-Estrada and anti groups, with both camps claiming the majority. More alarming, the Philippine peso plunged to all-time lows. We had hoped that the trial would result in an impartial resolution of the issues charged against our President. We also believed that opening the bank envelope was the only way to determine whether the contents of the envelope are relevant and material to the impeachment case. Even that hope is gone now. The premature vote in the Senate has revealed the shameless biases of Senators and appears to have effectively ended any further conduct of a fair trial. The process of democratic debate has been rendered a mockery by the predictable vote. The impeachment trial- which started out dignified - has been robbed of its moral ground. We had long called on Estrada to resign because of public loss of trust in his office. We asked him to let constitutional processes take over. He ignored the people's warnings. Now the Filipino people are again made the final arbiters of the nation's future. Rightly so. But our country is plunged once more into the perilous arena of the streets. WE are asking you in the international community to launch a campaign in your respective countries to help save Philippine democracy. Circulate letters and petitions asking Estrada to resign now to dissipate widespread public anger. Write or picket the Philippine embassies in your place expressing your concern over the deteriorating political and economic situation in the Philippines. Organize and link up with support groups for Philippine democracy. Express your solidarity with the Filipino people! Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) 17 January 2001 Manila and Davao City, Philippines http://www.iidnet.org From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Thu Jan 18 22:13:02 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 21:13:02 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1703] Thailand: ADB feels pressure over sewage plant loan Message-ID: <3A66EBDE.BA30C939@graduate.hku.hk> ADB feels pressure over sewage-plant loan PRESSURE has grown for the Asian Development Bank to review its Bt4-billion loan to the controversial Klong Dan wastewater treatment plant, with more than half of the Senate backing the move because of serious concerns over its environmental impact. Some 102 Senators signed a letter in December to ADB President Tadao Chino suggesting the loan review, according to a statement issued at a press conference at Parliament yesterday. "We urge the bank to take immediate steps to review its support of the project in its present form, with particular regard to addressing the concerns of local residents and the bank's lending policies," the letter said. The letter suggested the project might be against ADB policies on incorporation of social dimensions in bank operations, good governance, confidentiality and disclosure of information, and voluntary resettlement. "Nor was any environmental impact assessment or assessment of social impacts for the site at Klong Dan carried out," the letter continued. The Bt23.7-billion project has already received two disbursements of US$80 million (Bt3.44 billion) and $150 million (Bt6.45 billion) in loans from the ADB. The plant, started in 1997, is situated on the coast amid replanted mangrove swamps. It has drawn constant criticism from environmentalists and Klong Dan residents. A group of 72 senators visited the area last month to assess the project's impact and concluded that local residents had not been adequately informed about the plans. Among the senators who signed the letter were Jon Ungphakorn, Kraisak Chonhavan, Chirmsak Pinthong, Charoon Youngprapakorn, Niran Pitakwachara, and Maleerat Kaewka, some of whom are known to be sympathetic to civic pressure groups. Niran told the media that Senators would also campaign to get the incoming Thai Rak Thai government to review the project. "We want the new incoming government to investigate, with transparency, the way in which the land for the plant was purchased," said Charoon. He described the plant's chosen site as a "virginal environment," which Senators feared would suffer a negative impact if the project went ahead. Meanwhile, Deutsche Press-Agentur quoted ADB's resident Thailand advisor, Craig Steffensen, as saying: "We're looking at what, if anything, can be done to make this project better. We will see if some additional environmental safeguards can be put in place without disrupting the returns and turning the project into a white elephant financially. "If it's recommended that the project be shut down and some other sort of project put in its place in Samut Prakan, that's certainly an option we're willing to explore. But we're about $300 million into the project now, so I think what we're hoping is that we'll find effective measures for improving the existing project," Steffensen said. BY KAMOL SUKIN The Nation January 18 2001 From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Thu Jan 18 22:13:42 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 21:13:42 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1704] Philippines: San Roque dam to be completed despite Itogon stand Message-ID: <3A66EC06.A770B33B@graduate.hku.hk> http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/01-15-2001/topstories1.html Monday, January 15, 2001 SRMP to be completed despite Itogon stand By Cheryl G. Cruz The impending override on the veto of Itogon Mayor Cresencio Pacalso on the Council's earlier resolution withdrawing endorsement and support for the construction of the San Roque Multipurpose Project (SRMP) will not affect the completion of the $1.15 billion flagship project. This was the reaction of Benguet Gov. Raul Molintas to an earlier report that the Itogon council is poised to approve on third and final reading this Wednesday the resolution which will override Pacalso's veto. Molintas also belied allegations that the SRMP is no different from the government's two dam projects, the Binga and Ambuklao hydroelectric plants, with which affected residents who were dislocated because of the construction of the dams have yet to be fully compensated. "We cannot say (at this point) that families affected by the construction of the SRMP will not be given their due compensation. (Afterall), negotiations are still on-going" with regards the matter, he added. The governor also stressed that the National Power Corporation has already deposited some P50 million in escrow account, supposedly to be used as payment for legitimate claims and damages after final negotiations on how much will be paid the affected residents is completed. This only shows that the government-owned corporation is sincere in paying the affected residents and giving due compensation for any legitimate damage to properties and structures that will be incurred. He also said that with the recent favorable decision of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, the welfare and rights of the affected residents to land ownership and just compensation have been ensured. Earlier, Sun.Star reported that the Itogon Municipal Council is poised to override Pacalso's veto on an earlier resolution to withdraw support for the continuous construction of the SRMP due to alleged failure of the concerned agencies to comply with various conditions on the dam's construction. These conditions with which the NPC and the DENR allegedly failed to comply include the payment of compensation to families and of structures adversely affected in Benguet by the construction of the dam; the issue on upstream sedimentation problem; and that of the Environmental Impact Assessment or EIA which should already be answered by the DENR's Environmental Management Bureau. A source said "(there is) a strong belief that the national government is incapable of addressing the various concerns of the people, specially with what is happening right now." From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Thu Jan 18 22:13:59 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 21:13:59 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1705] Malaysian PM Says Govt Studying Scale Of Bakun Dam-Report Message-ID: <3A66EC17.80B8634D@graduate.hku.hk> Malaysian PM Says Govt Studying Scale Of Bakun Dam-Report KUALA LUMPUR (Dow Jones)--Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad Monday said the government was studying whether to revive the mammoth Bakun hydroelectric dam project in its originally planned scale, Bernama news agency reported. The dam, located in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak, had been intended to have a production capacity of 2,400 megawatts. Mahathir said a lot of money had been spent on various requirement for the project and "this must not be wasted." He said "demand for electricity is mounting very fast in Malaysia." The Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its Jan. 18 issue that the government's Economic Planning Unit last month began calling for bids for the controversial 15 billion ringgit ($1=MYR3.80) project. The report said the tender specifications indicate the dam won't be scaled back, as Mahathir had indicated last year. It said the cost of the project could surge to MYR20 billion because of the ringgit's fall against the U.S. dollar. The project, which was shelved in 1997 in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis, was undertaken by a consortium led by construction company Ekran Bhd. (P.EKN), but was taken over by the government in late 1997. -By Nirmala Menon; Dow Jones Newswires; 603 2692 5254; The Borneo Post Tuesday January 16, 2001 Bakun HEP: Full-scale revival still under study By BERNAMA Publishing Date : 16/01/2001 KUALA LUMPUR, Mon.- The government is studying whether to revive the Bakun Hydro-Electric Dam project on a full scale basis, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today at the Ministry of National Unity and Social Development's Hari Raya gathering here. Last October, the Prime Minister confirmed that the project in Belaga, Sarawak, would be revived. However, he said the government had not decided then if the project would be revived to its full scale. He had said a lot of money had been spent on various requirements for the project and "this must not be wasted and that "demand for electricity is mounting very fast in Malaysia." The Bakun project was shelved during the economic downturn in late 1997 and was taken over by the Minister of Finance Incorporated from Bakun Hydroelectric Corporation Bhd (BHC) in August last year. Speculation that the Bakun project would be revived to its full scale had boosted prices in shares of companies controlled by Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, who owns BHC. From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Fri Jan 19 08:07:53 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:07:53 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1706] Labour, environment in US-Chile, Singapore deals Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010118150753.0080baf0@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> excerpt: Both Chile and Singapore have agreed to language, included for the first time in the Jordan agreement, that commits both countries to enforcing current laws on labor and environmental protection, Barshefsky said. January 18, 2001 Barshefsky Passes on Advice by MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer > WASHINGTON (AP) -- Memo from the Clinton team to the new > Bush administration on trade issues: Follow our successes > but learn from our mistakes. Keep negotiating free trade > deals with Chile, Singapore and the entire Western > Hemisphere. Skip the bruising battle with Congress over > fast-track authority. > > That was the advice President Clinton's top trade > negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, gave to the incoming > administration Thursday in her last speech as U.S. trade > representative. > > She predicted the Bush administration would push ahead with > talks started by Clinton to create a free trade area > covering the entire Western Hemisphere as well as striking > separate agreements with Chile and Singapore. > > ''There is no question that the new administration will > continue with the basic policy course we set,'' Barshefsky > said in her speech to the Washington International Trade > Association. > > She urged the new administration to set as a top priority > the start of negotiations to get Russia into the World Trade > Organization as a way of incorporating the former communist > giant in the global economy. > > Clinton's efforts to move forward with an ambitious trade > agenda were hindered by the fact that Congress refused to > give him fast-track negotiating authority, which requires > Congress to vote on any negotiated agreements on an > expedited basis without amendments. > > Barshefsky said the administration's success in winning > congressional approval to grant China permanent normal trade > relations as part of its WTO membership bid was proof a > president does not need fast-track authority to forge major > trade agreements. > > She said the China vote showed the fallacy of the old > argument that no country would negotiate with a president > who did not have fast track, for fear that Congress would > pick apart the deal. > > She said Congress was more likely to vote for a specific > trade deal with demonstrable benefits for U.S. industries > rather than a generic request for negotiating authority. > > ''I would really urge the new administration to think very > hard about'' seeking fast-track legislation, Barshefsky > said. ''It will require huge political capital and in my > view is not necessary.'' > > Barshefsky later told reporters she had discussed this > subject with Robert Zoellick, nominated by Bush to be the > new U.S. trade representative. > > In the closing weeks of the administration, Clinton directed > the start of negotiations with both Chile and Singapore on > free trade agreements, following up on the administration's > success of negotiating a free trade deal with Jordan in > October. > > Barshefsky told reporters that based on her discussions with > Bush officials, she expected those talks will continue. > > Both Chile and Singapore have agreed to language, included > for the first time in the Jordan agreement, that commits > both countries to enforcing current laws on labor and > environmental protection, Barshefsky said. > > Key Republicans in Congress have objected to having this > language included in a trade deal. But Barshefsky said she > believed it was a good compromise and countered criticism > that removing trade barriers increases pressure on a country > to stop enforcing certain laws for competitive reasons. > > The Clinton administration is leaving much unfinished trade > matters, including fights with the European Union over > barriers it has erected against the sale of American beef > treated with growth hormones and against bananas produced on > plantations owned by U.S. companies. > > Barshefsky's chief agriculture negotiator, Greg Frazier, was > involved in discussions with EU officials on Thursday in an > 11th-hour effort to resolve the conflicts. But Barshefsky > said the two disputes were likely to carry over to the next > administration. > > Barshefsky said the effort to launch a new round of global > trade talks, which collapsed in Seattle in 1999, could > succeed this year, but only if the 15-nation EU agreed to > put agricultural barriers on the negotiating agenda. > > ^------= > > On the Net: > > U.S. Trade Representative: --------------------------------------------------- Aaron James 204-339 East 7th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5L 1M9 Phone: aaronj@interchange.ubc.ca http://members.tripod.com/aaronjeromewestjames/ --------------------------------------------------- From viktor at skyinet.net Fri Jan 19 18:33:47 2001 From: viktor at skyinet.net (viktor@skyinet.net) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:33:47 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1707] An appeal for support to help save the democracy in the Philippines Message-ID: <3A6809FB.3D429D10@skyinet.net> Friends; We enjoin you to support the appeal of the Filipino people to help save the democracy in the country by endorsing the statement of solidarity below and forwarding the same to your friends and colleagues. Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) www.iidnet.org -------------------------- WE STAND BEHIND THE FILIPINO PEOPLE A Statement of Solidarity WE, peoples from all over the world working for freedom and democracy, express our deepest concern over the political crisis that the Philippines is currently undergoing and wish to present this statement showing our solidarity with the Filipino people. Aware that the present political crisis stemmed from the filing of formal charges of impeachment against Philippine President Joseph Estrada for bribery, graft and corrupt practices, betrayal of trust and culpable violation of the Constitution. Aware that the charges led to the formation of an impeachment court, formed from members of the Philippine Congress and presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which started public hearings in December. Aware that the impeachment trial stopped last January 16 after the Philippine Senate impeachment court voted 11-10 against opening sealed bank documents that public prosecutors said would provide damaging evidence that Estrada acquired ill-gotten wealth through bribes and kickbacks after only 18 months in office. Disappointed that the controversial vote resulted in the immediate resigning of the Philippine Senate President and subsequently that of the 11 prosecutors from the Lower House, thus grounding to a halt the first ever impeachment trial in the country. Acknowledging that while the trial was in progress, the Philippine public gave the impeachment process the benefit of the doubt, but that now, public trust has eroded in the constitutional process to make their President accountable for his actions. Mindful that public indignation over the vote has been swift and spontaneous and has transformed into the so-called "Peoples Power Part 2" to oust the Estrada administration. Mindful of the stand of the democratic opposition, business groups and the Philippine churches that Estrada has lost the moral ascendancy to govern the country, we are concerned that the Philippines is now in deep political crisis, with its leadership already in question and its institutions slowly being paralyzed. We also view with deep concern that that the Philippines is in serious financial trouble, with the Philippine peso and the stock market continuing to fall. We therefore issue with urgency and deep concern the following calls: -For the Philippine President to heed the call for him to step down immediately because he has lost moral authority and public trust; -For the Philippine Armed Forces to desist from seizing power through unconstitutional means; -For the Philippine government to institute constitutional processes in an orderly takeover by a new administration; -For the two opposing camps to desist from violence which will plunge the Philippines into chaos and anarchy; -For international groups to support the Philippine movement for freedom and democracy. Signed: 19 January 2001 From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Sat Jan 20 04:35:52 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 11:35:52 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1708] Mainland to back any Pyongyang bid to join Apec forum Message-ID: <4.3.1.0.20010119113411.00ba0b90@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> http://www.hk-imail.com/inews/public/article_v.cfm?articleid=15654&intcatid=2 HK I-Mail Sat 20 Jan Mainland to back any Pyongyang bid to join Apec forum Agencies THE mainland said yesterday it would support any request by North Korea to attend this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum in Shanghai. ``If the North Korean side raises the question and other countries think that this question is worth discussing, then our attitude will be positive,'' foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said. Mr Zhu again refused to confirm the presence of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on the mainland, even though the reclusive leader was seen visiting Shanghai's stock exchange yesterday. Mr Kim has also visited a joint-venture General Motors car factory. The visit to the GM factory is the first direct contact with American capitalism for Mr Kim, whose intensely secretive Stalinist regime is formally at war with the United States. Accompanied by Premier Zhu Rongji and an entourage of 80, Mr Kim spent 30 minutes on Wednesday at the factory, part of a US$1.5 billion (HK$11.7 billion) venture 50per cent-owned by GM. They toured the assembly line that makes a luxury Buick sedan. The visit to the stock exchange came in the morning. Escorted by senior managers of the exchange, the North Korean leader went to the observation deck overlooking the trading floor, two employees at the exchange told reporters later. 19 January 2001 / 09:05 PM From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Sat Jan 20 04:49:14 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 11:49:14 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1709] WTO talks collapse after China stands firm on farm subsidies Message-ID: <4.3.1.0.20010119113757.00ba5d40@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> in an earlier AP article: Barshevsky urged new US trade rep Zoellick to avoid fast track negotiations and begin negotiations with Russia into the WTO. China's PNTR proof that fast track may not be neccesary. Bush likely to push ahead to create a FTAA ands striking separate agreements with Sing and Chile. Before leaving office, Clinton admin started neg w/ Chile and Sing, who agreed, along w/ Jordan in Oct, to deals to enforce current laws on labour and environ protection, despite op from key Republicans. EU resistance over GM foods and hormone induced beef and dairy last stop to WTO, now apparently China will add another barrier. South China Morning Post WTO talks collapse after China stands firm on farm subsidies Jan 19 2001 10:19AM PEGGY SITO The latest round of talks in China's 14-year bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) has broken down in a wrangle over agricultural issues and market access to the services industry. Analysts said divergence over the two issues could put China's expected admission later this year behind schedule. WTO deputy secretary-general Paul-Henri Ravier said delegates at the talks in Geneva had tried to reach a "package deal" that would involve a compromise in five remaining contentious areas. Agriculture and services were "the most important remaining sectors", Mr Ravier said, after chairing eight days of negotiations attended by delegates from 40 countries. The other three disputed issues were technical barriers to trade, industrial policy and China's trading rights. China insists its agriculture sector be allowed to adopt the same level of domestic support given to developing countries, which is 10% of total output value. Beijing currently subsidizes about 2%. However, the United States and the Cairns Group -- comprising Australia, Canada, Argentina, New Zealand, Thailand and Chile -- says China should be treated as a developed country, which would allow it subsidies of up to 5%. On the services sector, the US and other WTO members were still in dispute over how freely foreign insurance companies could operate in China. Long Yongtu -- China's deputy trade minister, who led the delegation in the talks -- said China needed to be able to support its 900 million farmers, describing demands by some WTO members as "too much". "If you bind our hands not to support our poor farmers in the countryside, that's too much, nobody would agree with that," said Mr Long. China had made concessions in agricultural negotiations on market access, including a commitment to cutting tariffs on agricultural products and agreeing not to introduce export subsidies that would distort trade, Mr Long said. However, Mr Ravier said members saw "very clearly the shape of the final package". "I feel that none of the outstanding problems are insurmountable," he said. A new round of talks is expected late next month or in early March. HSBC China Services research manager Benny Chiu Ling-bun said it was difficult to predict when China would join the WTO but that a short-term delay would not have a negative effect on China's fundamentals as the country was paving the way to further opening its markets independently of the WTO. Copyright ? 2000 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All Rights Reserved. From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Sat Jan 20 12:12:17 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 11:12:17 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1710] NGO statement for URGENT endorsement: Public Eye on Davos Message-ID: <3A690211.5CD03A18@graduate.hku.hk> Please circulate to NGOs only! -------- Original Message -------- Subject: NGO statement for URGENT endorsement Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:16:21 +0100 From: Jolanda Piniel Sorry for crossposting! Dear friends, The World Economic Forum will meet again in Davos/Switzerland from January, 25 to 30, 2001. For the second time, the Public Eye on Davos, an international NGO campaign, will be on site in order to challenge the Davos consensus on globalization processes. Please find below an NGO Statement which the Public Eye on Davos would like to launch in Davos. Please send your ENDORSEMENT, if you can, to endorsement@evb.ch until 23 JANUARY at the latest (name, organization, country). The statement will be published on 25 January. In the meantime, we ask you to not to make it public. Thank you for your support. Jolanda Piniel Berne Declaration/The Public Eye on Davos ********************************************************************* NGO Statement: the Public Eye on Davos Once a year, the World Economic Forum (WEF), an association of the largest private corporations worldwide, convenes for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In addition to the WEF members, some of the most influential politicians and representatives of international institutions will attend the event. Through its annual meeting, the WEF helps to enlarge and strengthen the influence of the private sector on international politics. Past Forum meetings have led to the launch of trade negotiations such as the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ­agreements which have caused social inequality and environmental destruction. Across the world, opposition against economic globalization is gaining strength. This has been evidenced by the successful protests against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) or the Millennium Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. In 2000, thousands of people demonstrated against economic globalization in Chiang Mai, Washington, Prague, Melbourne and Nice. They expressed their disagreement with the dominance of the corporate driven economic policies and called for democracy and transparency in international economic decision-making. Launched in 2000, the Public Eye on Davos will be present in Davos for the second time. This joint campaign of several non-governmental organizations (NGO) remonstrates against the influence which the private sector exerts on international policies, and warns of its negative impact on the safeguarding of human rights, social equity, democracy and the environment. The Public Eye on Davos calls for the implemention of the following basic rules by governments, international organizations and the private sector: Concerning Global Governance: · All governance structures on the national and international level must be based on transparent, accountable and democratic principles. Discussions and decisions which are relevant to the public at large should be held in fora which abide by these principles. Concerning Corporate Control: * An intergovernmental agreement should impose high standards of transparency and accountability on companies through binding rules. Companies must be required to disclose the social and environmental impacts of their activities in order to meet the needs of stakeholders - such as local communities, customers and ethical investors - for fair, accurate and relevant information. All stakeholders of companies - including local communities and employees - should be granted legal rights to challenge the activities of companies that threaten their interests. Such an agreement should be enforced by national legislation and backed by international law. * International anti-trust law should be agreed in order to control anti-competitive merger activity across, as well as within, countries. * National and international tax laws must be tightened to ensure that corporations pay fair taxes in all those countries in which they operate. * Corporations which commit criminal offences must be open to prosecution at both national and international levels. * All these measures must be backed by strong and effective sanctions, which might include expulsion from a particular national market, jail sentences for accountable directors, suspension of stock-market listings, removal of corporate charters or withdrawal of financial privileges such as access to Government subsidies and export credits. Concerning International Financial Relations: · There should be no further liberalization of the international financial system and no pressure for liberalization on the national level. Specificly, the proposed amendment of the IMF articles of agreement, according to which the IMF would receive the right to enforce capital account liberalizations in its member states, should not go ahead. · Short-term financial flows should be taxed and regulated in order to prevent further speculative attacks on national currencies. · The multilateral development banks, the official export credit agencies and the private banks should adopt binding policies in order to ensure that their projects comply with international environmental, labour and human rights standards. Governments should establish an overall framework for such standards, e.g. as part of the Rio + 10 process. · International financial institutions should be democratized and should be made more accountable to all stakeholders. Concerning International Trade Policies: · Any trade agreements must respect international environmental and human rights standards. · No further trade liberalization measures should be carried pending an independent investigation into the impacts of existing WTO agreements on human rights, social equity and the environment. Such an examination should have a special focus on the impact of international trade agreements on the poor, especially women, children and indigenous peoples. · No pressure should be put on poorer countries to open their markets, be it by multilateral institutions or by bilateral agreements. · The patenting of all living-forms, micro-organisms, plants, animals, including all their parts, whether they are genes, gene sequences, cells, cell lines, proteins or seeds, must not be allowed. As long as economic policies are shaped in private elite gatherings like the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, the Public Eye will be on Davos. The Public Eye on Davos is a joint project of the Berne Declaration (coordination), the South American Network "Asociaciσn Lationamericana de Organizaciones de Promociσn" (ALOP), Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International (and its Swiss affiliate Pro Natura), Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), the Tebtebba Foundation, the World Development Movement and the Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE). ******************************************* Jolanda Piniel Berne Declaration Coordination "The Public Eye on Davos" e-mail: davos@evb.ch Tel. +41 1 277 70 06 Fax. +41 1 277 70 01 website: www.davos2001.ch; www.evb.ch ******************************************************************************************************** The Public Eye on Davos Contact Address: Berne Declaration Quellenstrasse 25 P.O. Box 1327 CH- 8031 Zόrich Switzerland Phone +41/1/277 70 06 Fax +41/1/277 70 01 E-mail: davos@evb.ch web: http://www.davos2001.ch From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Tue Jan 23 01:38:18 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 00:38:18 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1711] Hawai'i prepares for ADB meeting Message-ID: <3A6C61FA.42F19BAE@graduate.hku.hk> Opposition prepares for investment meeting By Mary Adamski Star-Bulletin Honolulu Star-Bulletin Thursday, January 18, 2001 Hawaii groups organizing to demonstrate against the Asian Development Bank at its May conference here were told to expect a community relations blitz to persuade them the international investment agency is beneficial to Asia. "I'm puzzled about why Honolulu would volunteer to host this meeting," Phillipines professor and author Walden Bello said last night. "Is it because state officials don't follow events outside?" Bello, an expert on the effects of globalization in Asia, told a University of Hawaii crowd of 300 people that "ADB will deploy its (nongovernmental organizations) task force to Honolulu because of the sense that people here will provide trouble for them." He chronicled the opposition the bank and other global financial institutions encountered since riots disrupted the World Trade Organiation's 1999 meeting in Seattle. About 3,000 delegates are expected at the Asian Development Bank conference, which opens May 7 at the Hawaii Convention Center. The United States and Japan are key investors in the institution established 35 years ago for economic and social development in Asia. The Manila-based bank is now owned by 58 member nations. Groups oppose development The opposition from environmentalists and human rights groups has grown because "corporate-driven globalization has run over so many people," said Bello. He is a sociology professor at the University of the Phillipines and co-director of Focus on the Global South at the University of Bangkok. What happened in Seattle was not just street riots, he said, "but rebellion of developing countries within the meeting halls. They could no longer allow just a few countries to ram policies down their throats in the name of consensus." Bello told the meeting organized by environmental, political and indigenous rights groups that the goal is not to just demonstrate against globalization but "to think about, and propose alternatives. What do we find to replace this model of corporate-driven globalization? What is the alternative to this globalization that has muddled the world?" He said: "At this point (it) is an organization that is stuck. Its momentum has been lost." Last May at the banks meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, delegates were "confronted by thousands of fishers and farmers asking them to leave town." The opposition focused on the funding of a wastewater treatment plan[t] at a place where mussels are harvested, he said. "I think the moral ascendancy has shifted." Environmental disruption claimed Bello said the Asian Development Bank "is known as a nontransparent, nondemocratic organization. It has funded infrastructure -- roads and bridges -- and in the process has caused tremendous dislocation, environmental disruption and uprooting of communities." "When you talk to the ADB, they say it's in the process of reform. Most of the changes have been in the area of public relations." "You now have a responsibility," Bello said. "The ADB can come out and say it had the best conference ever in hospitable Honolulu. Or it can come away as a more chastened institution that is more willing to look at its really terrible record." From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Tue Jan 23 01:39:51 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 00:39:51 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1712] Laos stops World Bank forestry programme Message-ID: <3A6C6257.ABD6BA24@graduate.hku.hk> The following article is taken from the World Rainforest Movement's Bulletin No 41, December 2000. - Laos stops World Bank forestry programme The Government of Laos (GoL) has halted the Forest Management and Conservation Programme (FOMACOP) after the first five-year phase because of difficulties between the GoL and external actors including the World Bank over the management of logging revenues from the programme. Initiated by the GoL to promote "Sustainable Forest Management", the Fomacop was planned to be a 10-15 years programme with the first phase beginning in January 1995 and ending in September 2000. Fomacop had two subprogrammes: forest management and biodiversity conservation. The forest management programme consisted of "Village Forestry" in 60 villages comprising 20,000 village people and 145,000 hectares (ha) of land and forests in the Savannakhet and Khammoune provinces. Fomacop started with a total budget of US$20.3 million financed by a loan of $8.3 million from the World Bank, $5.6 million for technical assistance from the Government of Finland, a grant of $5 million from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and $1 million from the GoL. Implemented by the Department of Forestry and the district forestry offices, the consultants for Fomacop were the Finland-based Jaakko Poyry Consulting (of Finland), CARE International and Burapha Consultants in Laos. One of the main features of the programme was the establishment of Village Forestry Associations (VFAs) that consisted of training local communities in "village forestry" that including logging of "village forest management areas" ranging in size from 400 to 600 ha. While the forests remained under state ownership, the village people in the programme areas would keep the revenue from logging "after paying royalties and other taxes". The programme ran into difficulties in early 2000, after a World Bank Evaluation Mission reported in its Mission Aide-Memoire dated February 5, 2000 that: "Accompanying the investment program, the project design anticipated significant reforms in the policy framework. These included preparation of sector legislation, deregulation of market controls on wood to ensure export parity pricing of timber and issuance of implementing regulations, satisfactory to the Bank, for forest management. Compliance with these measures has been slow and partial. "The timeline shows a persistent pattern of policy changes, incomplete and inconsistent directions and excessive intrusion into the management and commercial practices of the VFAs.. These doubts are consistent with the mission's assessment of the revenue foregone by virtue of the timber sales procedure imposed by the Government.. it can be estimated that foregone Government revenues will amount to approximately US$800,000 and losses to VFAs . to nearly US$700,000. ". losses of this magnitude are not justifiable. They are suggestive of aggressive rent-seeking and preferential treatment of favored local timber purchasers at significant cost to the economy and intended project beneficiaries." The Aide-Memoire also warned that: "the village forestry model . has enormous potential to contribute to sustainable poverty alleviation and Government revenue mobilization. The prospect that this potential will be ignored is deeply troubling and will be raised by the mission with the World Bank Management and Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Marko Katila, Former Chief Technical Adviser of Fomacop, stated that with the village forestry management, "the villagers can sell the logs, and pay taxes like everyone else. They can keep the balance for communal development purposes only and to finance their future conservation and management efforts. On average, each village has received about US$3000 per year, which may not sound a lot of money but for villagers it is quite a lot." About the reasons for GoL halting the programme, Katila said: "The main problems have been mainly at the policy level. Fomacop has been in many ways a pioneering project in Laos in the area of community forestry. For many government forestry officers and industry people, the idea of community/village forestry was so new that they have been slow to accept it, which in way is understandable, because traditionally forestry has been state-driven and industry-oriented in Laos." "Also, Fomacop has been a pilot project so maybe it is not realistic to expect a single project to change things so quickly. However, that fact is some groups have wanted to continue practising forestry as "business as usual", which of course has created problems in the project area e.g. in the areas of log sales. One problem is that Laos still does not a have a clear policy and legal framework that would recognize village forestry and villagers' rights and also duties regarding forest resources, especially when it comes to natural production forests." The programme spent only US$1.8 million of the $8.3 million credit during the six years of Phase I; the GoL has returned the remaining funds to the World Bank. Although the programme is now stopped, the Finnish government has offered to provide a grant of US$18,000 for the government to continue with the work started by Fomacop, said Mr. Buahong Phantanusi, former head of the Forest Management and Conservation Project in Laos. By: Noel Rajesh, TERRA From notoapec at clear.net.nz Tue Jan 23 11:54:04 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 15:54:04 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1713] Fw: Hawaiian authorities increasing security for ADB meeting Message-ID: <003501c084e7$c0d88120$e385a7cb@notoapec> > Honolulu Police targeting ADB protesters > From: Refuse & Resist! Hawaii Chapter > > When the Asian Development Bank announced that it was going to > hold its next meeting in Honolulu, R&R! immediately began alerting > people to the probability of increased repression. That this is > happening is no longer a question! > > * According to the Honolulu Advertiser (7/12/2000), all of HPD's > 1800 officers are receiving special training in "handling civil > disturbances, dealing with crowds and other situations" to prepare > for the convention, and the HPD has requested "special equipment" > costing several million dollars. > > * Jeff Beatty, founder of Total Security Services International has > been brought in to speak at a seminar sponsored by the HPD and > Hawaii Tourism Authority. (Beatty is a former U.S. Army Delta > Force commander, special adviser to the FBI and CIA, and planned > security at the Atlanta, Barcelona and Los Angeles Olympics!) > > * On January 12, 2001, KITV ran a special report beginning with an > intimidating line of HPD officers loaded down with special > equipment to "deal with ADB protesters". They reported that the > HPD, firefighters, National Guard, and Sheriff's dept were > coordinating their training efforts and even staged a > "demonstration" at a special police training ground showing a few > demonstrators throwing water balloons and then being shot with > "non-lethal" weapons. This supposed "news" was threatening and > intimidating. > > * On Thursday, January 18, Channel 2 (Joe Moore) reported on 4 > bills introduced at City Council. The report again showed an > intimidating line of officers set to advance on protesters, and related > the bills to preparations to the ADB protests. The following > description of the bills comes directly from the City and County link: > > 1. Bill 6, 2001: "A bill for an ordinance relating to public parks and > recreation facilities. To (a) provide a definition for "camp" or > "camping" relating to park use and park use permits; (b) allow > horses and dogs used by law enforcement officers; and (c) allow > arrest for camping when and where camping is not allowed. > (Introduced by Chair Jon Yoshimura) > > 2. Bill 5, 2001: "A bill for an ordinance relating to wearing of masks > or disguises. To establish certain prohibitions with respect tot he > wearing of masks or disguises." Submitted by HPD; introduced by > Jon Yoshimura. > > 3. Bill 4, 2001: "A bill for an ordinance relating to prohibited > activities in the city: To prohibit any person to possess with intent to > use a device capable of emitting an obnoxious substance as > described in Section 40-2.2 of the ROH 1990." > > 4. Bill 3, 2001: "A bill for an ordinance relating tot he traffic code. To > amend the penalty and enforcement provisions relating to putting > glass or other injurious substances on a highway." The amendment > would allow the immediate arrest of persons who put glass and > other injurious substances on highways. > > These bills were submitted in preparation for the ADB, but will > remain after the ADB is over. In other words, we'll have a whole > new set of repressive rules and ordinances aimed at limiting the > freedom to protest. These ordinances are very broad. They clearly > seek to further limit the ability to camp, and allow police horses and > dogs to be used in arresting persons who are camping. Just what is > a "mask or disguise?" Often protesters wear paper masks in the > likenesses of individuals or even animals. Sometimes they wear > bandannas to protect them from possible tear gas attacks. And > what kinds of devices are "capable of emitting an obnoxious > substance"? The news report referred to water guns. Could it > include a soda can or water bottle? We can be sure it doesn't > outlaw police guns capable of emitting bullets, tear gas, pepper > spray, pellets, etc. > > The ADB Conference is still 4 months away, and Hawaii's > population is already being threatened and intimidated. New laws > are being adopted. Intimidating "news reports" are being aired. > Articles in the newspapers boast about the acquisition of new > equipment "prepare for the protesters". And youth are already > being interrogated by police detectives about their affiliations and > plans. In short, while peole from many different trends are > preparing for non-violent speak-outs and protests against the ADB, > the HPD (along with the military) are preparing for a police riot! This > is outrageous. > > Ben Cayetano and Hawaii's State Dept of Tourism and Economic > Development have issued an open invitation to finance agencies > such as the WTO, IMF, and APEC. In order to do this they are > willing to turn Hawaii into a virtual police state. R&R! calls on > everyone to protest every effort to limit our right to speak out > against the anti-people policies of the Asian Development Bank > (aka Asian Destruction Bank). > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: adbwatch- > hawaii-unsubscribe@egroups.com From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Wed Jan 24 04:03:14 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:03:14 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1714] Top-notch Asia specialists lined up for Bush team Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010123110314.00809ce0@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> New ambassador for Seoul, according to the article, is former spook Douglas Paal. He appeared in a Nike-produced video a few years ago, saying how happy Indonesian workers were to be making shoes for Nike contractors. Straits Times [Singapore] Tuesday, January 23, 2001 Analysis Top-notch Asia specialists lined up for Bush team By Lee Siew Hua US CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON - The new Bush administration looks likely to have a rich layer of Asian specialists in its foreign-policy team, unlike President Bill Clinton in his early years. Many have Pentagon origins and are oriented towards international security. So far, the names in the mix are more steeped in Japan than China. This coincides with the growing sense that a corrective tilt away from Beijing and towards Tokyo is due, a position pushed by Republican strategic thinkers. Even as Washington revels in the inauguration shindig, behind the scenes, there is 'shameless' lobbying for vacancies in the administration, a government official told The Straits Times. With the Cabinet members named, the focus has swung to the deputies and their teams who will fill influential second- and third-tier posts and steer policy on a vital day-to-day basis. The experts will fan out to the White House, the Pentagon, and the departments of State, Treasury and Commerce. Their principals - President George W. Bush, General Colin Powell and the designated National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleeza Rice - lack deep experience in Asia. So the Asia hands will, in significant ways, apply their skills to the brew of Asian issues that need perpetual vigilance. The powerful deputy posts at the State and Defence departments are expected to go to two former Pentagon officials, Mr Richard Armitage and Mr Paul Wolfowitz, respectively. Mr Armitage appears to have finally accepted Gen Powell's offer of the No 2 job at the State Department. He is a Powell pal, and, for some time, held out against involving their close personal friendship in his professional life. The bright perspective, of course, is that the burly, strong-minded Mr Armitage will have Mr Powell's ear, particularly on Asian issues. He has led a team to critique the Clinton policy on North Korea, and this triggered the Perry Report, which recommended drawing Pyongyang out of its isolationist shell. For the last two years, he worked on a new approach to Asia policy, with an emphasis on Japan and China. During the campaign, he was one of Mr Bush's Asia briefers. Mr Wolfowitz, the dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, appears ready to take up the deputy post at the Pentagon, with the support of Vice-President Dick Cheney. The former envoy to Jakarta is committed to Indonesia and thinks outside the box. But China has concerns about his hawkishness. Another name in the brew is Mr James Kelly, who is expected to be the chief Asia policymaker in the State Department. This will be the role of Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs. The former Navy captain, Pentagon aide and National Security Council official now helms the Pacific Forum think-tank in Honolulu. South Korean officials took the initiative to meet him this month, in a speedy engagement of the Bush administration, and also to start coordinating policy on the North. Mr Torkel Patterson, also a Pacific Forum scholar and retired Navy officer, is tipped to be the senior director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council. Both men possess a wealth of expertise in Japan plus military credentials. Analysts said they will provide the 'one-two punch' at the working level. The general pattern of Japan expertise and Pentagon connections in the Bush team appears to be reflected in these two men. But Mr Robert Manning of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of Team Armitage, which has worked on North Korea and Japan policy, told The Straits Times that it is more a case of 'across-the-board experience on Asia' rather than Japan expertise per se. He also said that the assistant secretaries will get more authority and have more gravitas, compared to the Clinton officialdom. 'What you'll see is much more day-to-day attention to the strategic perspective to Asia, as opposed to something falling into the inbox,' he asserted. Few China experts have been pinpointed so far, and this adds to the concern that Mr Bush may be over-emphasising Japan, just as Mr Clinton was perceived to lean too much towards China. But the situation with the Asian appointees could change. A large tract of the Washington talk about incoming personnel belongs to the speculative realm. Still, one prospect for the China portfolio at the National Security Council has been Mr Ford Hunt, a China expert and a special assistant to Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering. With the power shift to a Republican President after eight Clinton years, there will be a massive turnaround of ambassadors. These positions are regularly awarded to political loyalists and financiers. One name for the ambassadorship to Beijing is Mr Jon Huntsman, the former envoy to Singapore and a Mandarin speaker. Mr Douglas Paal, a former National Security Council senior official, is tipped for the Seoul ambassadorship. This is a heavyweight job, given the burning concerns over North Korea and the expectation that the Bush administration will slow down the Clintonian embrace of Pyongyang. For Indonesia, South-east Asian scholar Karl Jackson's name has been mentioned, and also Mr Tom Hubbard, recently an envoy to the Philippines and a career diplomat with a depth of Japan experience too. For Japan, one name mentioned was former Vice-President Dan Quayle. The envoy to India could be Mr James Lilley, a former ambassador to Beijing. China is wary of his views that the US must support a positive Asian power balance against Beijing. Clearly, India likes this tone, like many in the Bush team. In the State Department, the candidates for the post of Assistant Secretary for South Asia Affairs include Georgetown professor and former New Zealand diplomat James Clad. He chairs a working group on US-India relations. Others in the race are Mr Mat Daley, who handles India and Pakistan policy at the State Department, and also Pakistan-born scholar Sharin Thahir-Kehli. At the Cabinet level, there is little direct experience with Asia, except for Mr Robert Zoellick, a Jim Baker (former Secretary of State) protege who has bagged the post of US Trade Representative. He has strong government experience, which includes trade policy, particularly with Japan. During the election campaign, he and Mr Armitage, who appears headed for the State Department stratosphere, were involved in the attacks against Mr Clinton's Asia policy. They consolidated the Bush campaign's critique of the Clinton tilt towards China, while neglecting Japan plus regional allies and friends. Many of the Asian names highlighted by Asia analysts to The Straits Times are undeniably top-notch. The Asia hands and ambassadors will have to go through a big wave of confirmation hearings in the Senate, with some ready to work in the months ahead, and perhaps as late as November. Even as they start work at their new desks, there may be a slew of crises and issues in Asia and the world that the US will have to confront. --------------------------------------------------- Aaron James 204-339 East 7th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5L 1M9 Phone: aaronj@interchange.ubc.ca http://members.tripod.com/aaronjeromewestjames/ --------------------------------------------------- From notoapec at clear.net.nz Wed Jan 24 12:44:58 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 16:44:58 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1715] KMU news releases - Philippines Message-ID: <001201c085b8$0900d4e0$2f84a7cb@notoapec> > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "kmuid" > To: "kmuid" > Sent: 24 January 2001 03:37 pm > Subject: kmu news releases > > > > > > NEWS RELEASE > > DATE: January 24, 2001 > > > > KMU URGES GMA TO JUNK GLOBALIZATION POLICIES > > > > The militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) today deplored reports that President > > Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo insists on implementing the globalization policies > > of deregulation, liberalization and privatization, and that she will base > > her government's programs on these policies. > > > > KMU chairperson Crispin Beltran said that the president would do very well > > to rethink her adherence to these policies because they are what have > > hastened the destruction of economies not only in Asia, but all over the > > globe. > > > > "Globalization is the bane of all economies and all working peoples. It is > > precisely because of these policies that hundreds of thousands of workers > > have lost their jobs, and currencies all over Asia plummeted. President > > Macapagal-Arroyo will not be able undo the damage done by the previous > > administrations that advocated globalization if she insists on pushing for > > full blast privatization, deregulation, and liberalization in the economy. > > On the contrary, she will be exacerbating the crisis, and hastening the > > economy's destruction," he said. > > > > Beltran urged the president to reverse the policies of globalization. > > "Nationalization and stricter government control over the strategic > > businesses and industries such as oil, water, electricity, > > telecommunication and transportation are what's needed on the onset to > turn > > this economy around. Further opening the national economy to foreign > > business will result in the closure of small local businesses, > > confiscation of lands and dislocation of millions more of farmers in the > > countryside; greater unemployment and the heightened and more rampant > labor > > rights violations ," he said. > > > > "We strongly urge GMA to junk these policies. There are not enough safety > > nets for the kind of damage globalization creates. Under globalization, > > all the nets have holes, or there are no nets at all and the people's > > livelihood crash directly to the ground." > > > > The labor leader meanwhile also said that the local big business groups > > should not be too enthusiastic about the economy's chances for recovery. > > > > "The crisis is not merely a result of the corruption and repressiveness of > > the previously deposed Estrada administration. Even before juetengate, the > > economy was already in recession. Fundamentally, the crisis is a result of > > government's adherence and implementation of the globalization policies > > that have made the economy very vulnerable to the plunder of big foreign > > businesses, and their local partners and counterparts in the local > business > > and landed community," he pointed out. > > > > "The protests will be starting up again soon enough if the livelihood of > > Filipinos continue to plummet along with the value of the peso. Already, > > the retrenchments from various factories all over he country have begun to > > pile up. The new administration should address these very basic issues as > > soon as it can if it intends to win the confidence and trust not just of > > big business, but more importantly, of the Filipino people," he concluded. > # > > > > > > > > > > > > > > PLEASE TAKE NOTE! PLEASE TAKE NOTE! PLEASE TAKE NOTE! > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > > This address is good until January 31, 2000: > > > > Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Labor Center > > (May First Movement Labor Center) > > 37-A Quinto's Compound > > Tomas Morato Ave., Quezon City 1112 > > PHILIPPINES > > Telefax: (0063-2) 414-6539 (national) > > (0063-2) 725 6781 (international department) > > E-mail: kmuid@csi.com.ph > > > > > > >From February 1, 2000 KMU's ADDRESS WILL BE : > > > > KILUSANG MAYO UNO (KMU) LABOR CENTER > > (May First Movement Labor Center) > > G/F, BALAI OBRERO > > 63, Narra Street, Brgy. Claro > > Project 3, Quezon City > > PHILIPPINES > > email: > > Telephone Numbers : (63-2) 912 2530 (international department) > > (63-2) 421 1049 (international department - telefax) From notoapec at clear.net.nz Wed Jan 24 14:55:06 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 18:55:06 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1716] USTR Barshefsky reflects.... Message-ID: <000a01c085ca$374aa260$1ccca7cb@notoapec> January 18, 2001 Barshefsky Passes on Advice by MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Memo from the Clinton team to the new Bush administration on trade issues: Follow our successes but learn from our mistakes. Keep negotiating free trade deals with Chile, Singapore and the entire Western Hemisphere. Skip the bruising battle with Congress over fast-track authority. That was the advice President Clinton's top trade negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, gave to the incoming administration Thursday in her last speech as U.S. trade representative. She predicted the Bush administration would push ahead with talks started by Clinton to create a free trade area covering the entire Western Hemisphere as well as striking separate agreements with Chile and Singapore. ''There is no question that the new administration will continue with the basic policy course we set,'' Barshefsky said in her speech to the Washington International Trade Association. She urged the new administration to set as a top priority the start of negotiations to get Russia into the World Trade Organization as a way of incorporating the former communist giant in the global economy. Clinton's efforts to move forward with an ambitious trade agenda were hindered by the fact that Congress refused to give him fast-track negotiating authority, which requires Congress to vote on any negotiated agreements on an expedited basis without amendments. Barshefsky said the administration's success in winning congressional approval to grant China permanent normal trade relations as part of its WTO membership bid was proof a president does not need fast-track authority to forge major trade agreements. She said the China vote showed the fallacy of the old argument that no country would negotiate with a president who did not have fast track, for fear that Congress would pick apart the deal. She said Congress was more likely to vote for a specific trade deal with demonstrable benefits for U.S. industries rather than a generic request for negotiating authority. ''I would really urge the new administration to think very hard about'' seeking fast-track legislation, Barshefsky said. ''It will require huge political capital and in my view is not necessary.'' Barshefsky later told reporters she had discussed this subject with Robert Zoellick, nominated by Bush to be the new U.S. trade representative. In the closing weeks of the administration, Clinton directed the start of negotiations with both Chile and Singapore on free trade agreements, following up on the administration's success of negotiating a free trade deal with Jordan in October. Barshefsky told reporters that based on her discussions with Bush officials, she expected those talks will continue. Both Chile and Singapore have agreed to language, included for the first time in the Jordan agreement, that commits both countries to enforcing current laws on labor and environmental protection, Barshefsky said. Key Republicans in Congress have objected to having this language included in a trade deal. But Barshefsky said she believed it was a good compromise and countered criticism that removing trade barriers increases pressure on a country to stop enforcing certain laws for competitive reasons. The Clinton administration is leaving much unfinished trade matters, including fights with the European Union over barriers it has erected against the sale of American beef treated with growth hormones and against bananas produced on plantations owned by U.S. companies. Barshefsky's chief agriculture negotiator, Greg Frazier, was involved in discussions with EU officials on Thursday in an 11th-hour effort to resolve the conflicts. But Barshefsky said the two disputes were likely to carry over to the next administration. Barshefsky said the effort to launch a new round of global trade talks, which collapsed in Seattle in 1999, could succeed this year, but only if the 15-nation EU agreed to put agricultural barriers on the negotiating agenda. On the Net: U.S. Trade Representative: http://www.ustr.gov/ From aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca Wed Jan 24 06:28:27 2001 From: aaronj at interchange.ubc.ca (Aaron James) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 13:28:27 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1717] Japanese Firms to Boost Jet Engine Parts Production for Bombardier Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010123132827.007b3500@pop.interchange.ubc.ca> Japanese Firms to Boost Jet Engine Parts Production for Bombardier Japanese Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., which manufactures turbines, fans, shafts, and auxiliary equipment, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., which produces gearboxes, are increasing their manufacturing of components for the jet engine of a small passenger plane co-developed with GE Co. The Japanese firms will increase their output of the parts over the next two years. The engines are used by Montreal based Bombardier Inc. Nikkei Industrial Daily (Japan) --------------------------------------------------- Aaron James 204-339 East 7th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5L 1M9 Phone: aaronj@interchange.ubc.ca http://members.tripod.com/aaronjeromewestjames/ --------------------------------------------------- From fod346 at hotmail.com Wed Jan 24 18:23:39 2001 From: fod346 at hotmail.com (winner white) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 14:23:39 +0500 Subject: [asia-apec 1718] Influx of Refugees & their conditions in Pakistan Message-ID: Influx of Refugees and their conditions in Pakistan 7th IRAP Conference- South Africa January 2001 by: Ayaz Latif Palijo (Pakistan) Background 54 years after the 1947 Independence of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent, 30 years after the creation of Bangladesh and 12 years after the withdrawal of the last Soviet soldier from Afghanistan, Pakistan is still a country in which refugee-based politics, resettlement process and armed conflicts involving millions of refugees still continue. Dealing with issues like poverty, corruption, bad governance, gender discrimination and social injustice, South Asia today faces the struggle for survival by millions of poverty-ridden destitutes, and tomorrow threatens the future of millions of illiterate adults. In Pakistan, which has one of the lowest literacy rates and indicators of gender development in the world, widespread poverty prevails because of most powerful industrial-feudal interests and illiteracy. Since early 90s of the last century more than 80 million people in South Asia have become unemployed, millions of people have been reduced to absolute poverty and hundreds of thousands have been forced into crimes. Now a days when internationally more and more emphasis is being laid on civil and human rights worldwide, on creating the pre-requisite onditions for the return of refugees to their homes, on their proper resettlement and on helping them to overcome the trauma of forced exile. South Asia and Pakistan lag behind even many developing countries of the third world in terms of Human Rights awareness, refugee rights, gender balance, prisoner rights and individual security. At the beginning of the 21st century, we live in the worst governed region in the world where more than one-half of women and one-third of men live on or below the poverty line, where history remains distorted, intolerance is on the rise, where displacement, honour killings, child marriage and bonded labor are upheld in the name of facing poverty, traditions, development and religion, where the weaker sections of society e.g. women and refugees and minorities continue to struggle against prejudice, discrimination and denial of human rights. Much of the blame in the case of Pakistan for this complete destruction of our already weak social fabric rests with the 11 years of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq's regime (supported by West) during which children took refuge in abandoning books and taking up the Kalashnikov & drugs. According to the statics of 1995 of the more than 20 million refugees of the world, 6.4 million were living in Southeast Asia (mostly Iran and Pakistan), North Africa, and the Middle East, 5.7 million in Africa south of the Sahara, 4.4 million in Europe and North America, 1.2 million in Latin America and the Caribbean and 1.9 million in the remaining countries of Asia and Oceania. In terms of refugees and immigrants, Pakistan (population: 140 millions with a density of 170 persons per sq km increasing at a rate of 2.7 % a year) has been facing and accepting four main groups of refugees from neighboring countries for the last 5 and half decades: 1. India (since 1947) 2. Bangladesh (since 1970) 3. Afghanistan (since 1979) 4. Burma, Iran and some African and South Asian countries. Refugees, Resettled and Illegal Immigrants in Pakistan The British ruled the Indian subcontinent for nearly 200 years (1756-1947). After the great national revolt in 1857, the British allowed the formation of political parties and The Indian National Congress, representing the majority of Hindus, was created in 1885. The Muslim League was formed in 1906 to represent the Muslim minority. The division of the subcontinent caused awful dislocation of populations, it resulted in the forced exchange of 18 millions Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan and Muslims from India-the greatest population transfer in history. The subcontinent was divided and sub-divided on the basis of majority provinces. Four Muslim majority provinces - Punjab, Bengal, Sindh and Frontier out of total eleven provinces were separated and sub-divided to form a separate State, which was named Pakistan and seven Hindu majority provinces remained with India. As per original plan, no significant migration between the two states was envisaged. Both the Hindu and Muslim communities were expected to continue residing in the state where they resided on the partition day. But the religious fanatics and fundamentalists of both the communities and the last British Viceroy Lord Mount Batten saw to it that the partition was taken as requiring that India be divided among Muslim and Hindu population of India, so that all Indian Muslims should live in Pakistan and all Hindus should live in India. This huge human migration transformed for the worse the entire ethnic, linguistic, economic, social and political composition of Sindh a province of Pakistan. It took away a sizable chunk of Sindhi Peoples ' historical national resources and reduced their percentage of the total of the population of the province. In fact Sindh was independent when the British conquered it in February 1842 and later designed it as a Province. In all fairness, it ought to have been allowed to resume its previous status as a sovereign state in August 1947, when the British Raj (Rule) came to an end but on the contrary in the course of 50 years confiscatory black laws, called the Evacuee Laws, were used as a weapon for usurping Sindhi property worth billions of Rupees and the indigenous Sindhis of Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Sukkur were colonized by refugees and illegal immigrants from UP, CP, Bihar (India), Punjab and Afghanistan. The demographic shift caused an initial bitterness between the two countries that was further intensified by accession to each country of a number of princely states. On August 14-15, 1947, the princely states of Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Kashmir whose treaties with British government lapsed on partition day became technically independent, but when the Muslim ruler of Junagadh, with its predominantly Hindu population, acceded to Pakistan a month later, India annexed his territory. Hyderabad's Muslim prince, ruling over a mostly Hindu population, tried to postpone any decision indefinitely, but in September 1948 that issue was also settled by Indian arms. The Hindu ruler of Kashmir, whose subjects were 85 percent Muslim, decided to join India. Pakistan, however, questioned his right to do so, and a war broke out between India and Pakistan. Although the UN subsequently resolved that a plebiscite be held under UN auspices to determine the future of Kashmir, India continued to occupy about two-thirds of the state and refused to hold a plebiscite. This deadlock, which still persists, has intensified suspicion and antagonism between the two countries and has been resulting in migration of millions of people during the last 55 years. In fact no transfer of population was ever suggested at any stage of the struggle for independence from British rule. The Pakistan Resolution of 1940 itself, which is the founding document of the struggle for Pakistan, did not envisage imposing population burdens upon the new states and their constituent Provinces. It did not oblige any Province to accept a single person from any other place including India. Much less does it envisage people having their historical homelands, turned into petty minorities in these very homelands by wholesale population transfers. Nothing could be clearer on this point than Mr. Jinnah's historic inaugural speech to the first Constituent Assembly three days before the coming into existence of Pakistan, in which he directed the people to forget the bitter past and bury the communal hatchet so that the entire story of Hindu-Muslim strife and communal hatred may become a thing of the past. Until December 1971 Pakistan included the province of East Pakistan, in 1971, however, East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan and assumed the name Bangladesh. India claimed that nearly 10 million Bengali refugees crossed its borders, stories of atrocities by Pakistan and specially its Bihari vigilantes upon Bengalis abounded. Afterwards thousands of Muslim rightists / fundamentalists (Biharis) demanded to go to former West Pakistan a place thousands of miles away they had never seen before. Biharis have never set foot on the soil of present Pakistan, but instead of continuing to live where they have always lived after the establishment of Pakistan and where a great number of them were born, they are migrating to Pakistan as "Stranded Pakistanis" and have got settled in Karachi the capital of Sindh province destroying its socio-economic fabric. 20 years after the 1979 Soviet support of the communist Govt, Afghanistan is still a country in which armed conflict has been supported by the neighboring countries and the western world. Throughout the following years a bitter struggle over power between the various mujahideen (fundamentalist) groups ensued and the country has in the process been devastated, producing the world's largest ever single refugee case-load (6.2 million persons). In 1998, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees assisted about 107,000 refugees to return to Afghanistan, of whom 93,000 returned from Pakistan and 14,000 from Iran. While this is probably the largest ever repatriation of a single group, more than 2.6 million refugees still live in exile, giving the Afghans also the unfortunate distinction of remaining the largest single refugee group in the world, for the 20th year in succession. Their numbers in Pakistan peaked in 1990 at 3.27 million and today there are still around 1.2 million in refugee settlements. This does not include refugees living in urban centers such as Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi. Initially Several NGOs and HR organizations including UNHCR, Red Cross, CARE, US Committee for Refugees, SNPO, Church World Service, Amnesty International, CRS and others started new schemes to identify refugee groups in urban areas of Sindh and NWFP Pakistan but ultimately they realized that the remaining refugees were not very keen to return home due to destroyed houses, lack of employment opportunities and poor irrigation systems. Despite the fact that 84% of returnees reported were feeling safe, and had not experienced problems either with landmines or other personal security issues and they were able to recover their land and/or houses without difficulty, the majority was quite satisfied in staying in Pakistan where they have been earning a lot from drugs and arms business. These Afghan mujahideen, molvis and talibans have been destroying the already wounded Sindh, Balochistan and Seraiki belt, economically and socially. The ban on modern English education, NGO activities and progressive literature, repression of women, many of whom live like prisoners in their own homes, is only a harsh symptom of a larger disease. These refugees have decreed that women could no longer work and study and must be veiled in the all-enveloping chadar, or shuttlecock burqa, they can not marry the groom of their choice they can not refuse to marry elderly sick married men. They have been forced to remain in their homes and even not allowed to visit hospitals and rural health centers and to die of suffocation. Small boys as well as girls are being denied education because many teachers were women who have not been replaced, and their male counterparts who remained in the schools are often not paid and therefore do not show up. The mullas and madarsa teachers have also been found involved in sodomy on small kids. In remote villages and surrounding areas of Madarsas in Pakistan the Afghan refugee leaders have not only enforced strict rules on what women must wear, but now they have banned men from wearing western clothes, un-bearded villagers or forced to leave the area. These Afghan refugees and Talibans justify, encourage and facilitate the trafficking of AK47 and other weapons and use of local made drugs including NASWAR, OPIUM, HEROIN and BHANG. Their leaders and Mullas import these drugs from Afghanistan which produced 4,600 tons of opium last year, more than doubling its 1998 output and accounting for 75 per cent of the total world opium production for the 1998-1999 season, according to ODCCP. The total estimated production of illicit opium for 1999 was about 6,000 metric tons, roughly 60 per cent more than the 3,750 metric tons recorded in 1998. The economy of Pakistan grew by 5 % annually during the period from 1965 to 1980 and by 6 percent during the 1980s and early 1990s. Nevertheless, in the early 1990s, the majority of the Country's citizens remained poor and heavily dependent on the agricultural sector for employment. This was largely a result of the country's high rate of population increase, influx of Afghans & Biharis and political factors, such as the war of subjugating East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971, involvement in Afghan crisis and a coup d'ιtat in 1977 which slowed economic growth and modernization. As for as the displacement is concerned every year government projects, natural catastrophe and man-made disasters destroy and contaminate several villages and towns of Pakistan. Cyclones in Thatta and Badin districts, drought of Thar, Kacho, Kohistan, Urenji and Khuzdar and mega projects like Tarbella and Kalabagh Dam have threatened millions of indigenous people and the poor villagers are forced to flee every year. These environmental refugees uprooted from their native land will have to be away from their ancestral homes for seasons, years or even for lifetimes. Indigenous Opinion, Demographic Aggression & Meager Resources If you would ever find an opportunity to discuss the refugee and illegal immigrants questions with Sindhi, Baloch and Seraiki democrats, nationalists and common literate people of Pakistan you would hear following rational and logical arguments: 1. Grant of Pakistani citizenship to millions of Afghan, Indian and Bihari refugees and illegal immigrants is not only a matter of concern to the government of the day but is a question of life and death for Sindhis and Balochs. 2. The province of Sindh has just so much quality and quantity of resources which are less than sufficient for its own people who have been living here and have been protecting, developing and preserving these meager resources with their sweat and blood for over a score of centuries. 3. The mass migration of Indian Muslims after the establishment of Pakistan to Sindh has already taken away a sizable portion of Sindhi Peoples' national resources, reduced their percentage of the total of the population and consequently their effectiveness as the owners of their homeland. 4. The Pakistan resolution which is the Political foundation stone of the struggle for Pakistan did not envisage putting of enormous Population burdens on and reduction of the economic Political and demographic status of the People who had volunteered to become parts of Pakistan. 5. No people in the world including Afghans and Biharis have any vested or moral right to go on changing their places of residence like shirts every other day at their sweat will, to go on abusing the hospitality of one people and thrusting themselves upon another when ever they like. 6. The Afghans had their chance to return back after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and Biharis have had their choice after leaving Bihar, to live in their new Bengali home in fraternity with their peaceful Bengali brothers but they failed to live or rather chose not to live with their Muslim brothers in peace and chose to help turndown their chosen homeland into fire and blood. 7. Every one knows that a number of Indian Muslims, Biharis and Afghans were supporters of General Yahya Khan's and General Zia's disastrous actions against their own people. They have already reached Pakistan illegally and are living and working here and are demanding full civil rights and facilities as Pakistani citizens and due to their presence Pakistan was beset by domestic unrest in the mid-1990s. Violence between rival political, religious, and ethnic groups erupted frequently within Sindh Province, particularly in Karachi. More than 650 people were killed in 1994 and thousands in 1995-1999 including political leaders, lawyers, human rights activists and two U.S. diplomats, the first violent incident directed at Westerners. 8. The mass migrations of People has been one of the forms of uprooting historical owners of different territories and it has caused uprooting of natives from their own historical homelands by more powerful neighbors. History shows that all the immigrants who have legally or illegally come to Pakistan, have always converged on Sindh causing torment and destruction to the People of Sindh in the from of over-strain on their already exhausted meager resources Refugees, Jails and Violence As for as the question of Bengali, Iranian, Burmese and other refugees and illegal immigrants are concerned they are living a terrible life in Pakistan. The refugee, women and children related laws of Pakistan have a number of contradictions between customary practices, old conventions, Muslim jurisprudence, statutory law and the desires of Pakistani human rights organizations. Illegal immigrants and refugees awaiting criminal trial in Pakistani prisons outnumber those convicted of a crime by a ratio of 4-1 and more than 1500 Afghanis, Biharis, Bengalis and Burmese are imprisoned in the country's jails. Of these prisoners who have been incarcerated in different jails almost 78 % are awaiting trial, a process that can take months or even years due to the delayed submission of police investigation reports and the frequent adjournment of hearings. These helpless prisoners including more than 50 children are maltreated and manhandled in jails where they sleep without mattresses on bare cement floors, or on raised cement blocks that serve as beds and are provided with improper and sub standard food, are not allowed to meet their relatives without KHARCHI (bribe) and complain of conditions unfit for animals. In addition, more than one-third of the illegal immigrants do not have a lawyer to defend them and hence they languish for months in jails and police lockups. Police and prison officials frequently use the threat of abuse to extort money from these prisoners. The extent of this warped system is even more evident when the victim is a non-Muslim. The violence against refugee and illegal immigrant women has escalated to an intolerable level and the most worrying and disturbing factor in these crimes is the absolute impunity with which they are committed. The increasing level of gender-based violence is exacerbated by the indifferent attitudes of government institutions like the police, legal system and legislature which are deeply biased against women. In August 1999 the Pakistani Senate voted to block debate over a draft resolution condemning incidents of violence against women and only four members of the Senate voted in favor of discussing the draft. There are very few women's shelters for rape victims and for many women, prostitution and suicide appears to be the only means of escape. Child abuse is one of the most unacknowledged of crimes and the majority of the children abused are 10 years of age or less. Conclusions The refugee problem has several causes. For centuries refugee movements were a result of religious and racial intolerance and entire groups were exiled or deported by religious authorities in an effort to enforce conformity. Politically motivated refugee movements, frequent in modern times, have occurred intermittently since the development of governments powerful enough to oppress nonconformist minorities. People may be forcibly driven out of their country by an unfriendly government, religious fanaticism or law and order situation. Economic reasons have caused people to lose their homes and ethno-lingual terrorism has also been a frequent excuse for driving people from their homelands. While refugees normally flee from war, tyranny, or political persecution, the voluntary migrants, whether internal or external leave their homelands to seek better employment elsewhere. The growth in the number of economic migrants have created a shift in patterns of movement around the world and the persistence of the refugee problem has made it increasingly difficult to find places for all who have been left homeless. Often they arrive in countries like Pakistan, India and Iran that are too poor to take care of them or that are already overcrowded. The unceasing inflow of refugees has also caused economic strains and after a global economic downturn, citizens in the host nations resent the newcomers' competition for their jobs. The time has come when South Asian countries would also be confronted with the asylum and refuge question like Switzerland, Norway, France, West Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries. The large-scale movement of refugees in Asia, Africa and Latin America is bound to continue and even to intensify as the world's population continues to increase, mostly in the countries least able to provide for their inhabitants. All of us know that the land, water and sub soil resources of the earth are not inexhaustible or ownerless. These are there simply because they have been possessed, protected and developed by individuals, communities, peoples and nations. Sizable number of people cannot go from one territory to another and take a share of its resources without reducing the share of those who are there since centuries with no where else to go and no other resource to share. Our South Asian helpless and downtrodden villagers do not have jobs, food, clean water, electricity, roads, halfway decent homes, effective schools and hospitals. They have been dominated and oppressed by feudal system, the ruling establishment, aggressive refugees and fundamentalism who just want to rule something, dominate someone. Illiterate villagers, refugees, women and children are easily available and most vulnerable targets. In this catastrophic situation concern for civil, human and legal rights of refugees cannot be separated from that for the economic, social & cultural rights of the people of the host countries and the time has come when recognition and respect for and promotion of indigenous people's civil & political liberties and securities should be given prime attention and importance. This consciousness-raising exercise is not generally undertaking by NGOs and Human Rights groups. As for the governments in countries like Pakistan are concerned their contribution to upholding human rights is mainly in the form of rhetoric, proclamations & promises. On the one hand such governments believe that the only option available to them is to improve and strengthen law and order and set up commissions for refugees and on the other hand the Indian, Pakistani, Afghan and Iranian governments are spending billions on jingoism and defence budgets. The human rights and advocacy organizations of Pakistan have been working in partnership with international networks, coalitions and support organizations to help reduce human displacement and resettlement but they will have to do more of this by initiating political debate, influencing peace and encouraging dialogue between bordering countries and between the natives and the refugees. The combination of repressive and regressive religious and state policies is a formidable barrier, which these organizations are seeking to overcome with the help of sympathetic political parties and media. The sane and enlightened elements of the society are aware that many religious movements were progressive in their initial phase, but after the passage of time they were turned into the handmaiden of those very opposite forces against whom these movement had come into action. Instead of becoming the weapon of the deprived and oppressed they became the weapon of their adversaries. So is the case with the national question. Totalitarian governments and dictators like Gen. Zia used the fanaticism and made the terms national and the ethnic justice, a term of abuse for the people. Millions of our South Asian brothers and sisters have spent their lives in refugee camps, in distant lands and isolated prohibited areas and thousands of our comrades have spent several precious years of their lives in jails, bearing the pain and surviving brutalities and tortures with sheer will-power. It is difficult to determine which is the higher price to pay under an autocratic dictatorship, the price of participating in peoples movement in one's own country or that of going into exile. In truth, it is a difficult distinction to make. The time has come when there should be forged a broad unity in the common struggle of the peoples of this region, comprising Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives. Most of us need peace to work, to study, to live, to marry, to sing, to dance, to live like human beings with our share of pains and pleasures. And for that we will have to forge a peace movement in the shape of greater coordination in the working of all radical parties and NGOs. This can be done if they join hands to draw up an agreed programme and work with special integral focus on refugees, native populations, indigenous interests and empowerment of downtrodden masses instead of charity, so-called routine census studies and impact assessments. Empowerment alone can facilitate emancipation and it can be achieved if people are made aware of their rights and of the importance of freedom from imposed backward traditions. Additionally, explicit criminalization of all forms of domestic and familial violence in refugee and illegal immigrant communities against women is the need of the time. There is a need for establishment of clear guidelines for police intervention and reenactment in the case of Pakistan of the repealed provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860, with an amendment to impose a severe punishment for forced and bonded labour, child abuse and violence against women. It is necessary to speed the pace of development and relations between the various countries. What is important is to emerge out of poverty, to stop wasting our resources in the arms race. We are still in a sense an economic colony, we are still in a sense second rate citizens of the world. The recent grassroots developments and human rights initiatives have shown that there is a new global actor on the stage. This international grassroots movement can play a significant role in bringing about significant improvements in the lives of refugees and illegal immigrants in South Asia. We know that progress is always slow in an area which has been kept silent for ages. It will take hard work and relentless struggle to change the status quo. Pushing public opinion on these issues is a most important achievement and our committed people have been working for the desired changes in the status quo. We would have welcomed if there had been regional discussions and seminars on the refugee problems of South Asia where we could bring together refugee women, refugee rights groups, refugee decision-makers, academics, government representatives, UNHCR and others interested in ensuring that the refugees and the displaced receive help, guidance and protection. We should have people willing to develop the refugee law clinics to undertake the actual interviewing, counseling, country of origin research, and ultimately the representation of the refugees and asylum seeker, all in an effort to assist the governments and UN bodies in providing help, guidance and protection. The question of the day is not whether gross abuses against refugees and illegal immigrants are rampant in South Asian society but that how many of you have spared few moments to support our Human Rights and Advocacy groups and radical activists, and above all how many of us, who are from the same historical and cultural background, have changed our defensive and apologetic attitude and have acted against our tradition our system by refusing to subject our companions to the barbaric customs of jingoism, rural traditions, fundamentalism and governmental terrorism. I can assure you that the majority of the laboring masses of Sindh and Pakistan are ready to clasp the hand of any one who is willing to march forward with them on the path of a peaceful and democratic struggle for a better and peaceful life for all of us. Ayaz Latif Palijo Advocate (SRC Pakistan) Email: psrc@hyd.paknet.com.pk, fsr5st@yahoo.com, fsr5st@usa.net References 1. Human Development in South Asia 1997 by Mahbub ul Haq-Oxford. 2. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan- Annual Report 1999. 3. People's Summit on APEC, Proceedings. 4. Document & Reports of UNHCR, Red Cross & other Organizations. 5. Reports of 56th Session of UN Commission on Human Rights. 6. Kot Lakhpat Jo Qaidi (Jail Diary) by RB Palijo 7. Amnesty International's reports. 8. Bakh Jee Sakh Sindhi Book of Columns and Articles. 9. Qaidyani Jee Dairy (Biography of a women prisoner) by Akhtar Baloch. 10. Email discussions on Sindhorg, HelpAsia and LawJuC lists. 11. Issues of Monthly Subuh Theendo & Daily Kawish, Ibrat, Sach & Jago _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From amittal at foodfirst.org Thu Jan 25 04:40:20 2001 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 11:40:20 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1719] Action Alert! FDA Fails To Require Labeling of GE Foods Message-ID: <0.700000824.437601615-212058698-980365220@topica.com> Action Alert! FDA Fails To Require Labeling of GE Foods Last week, in the final days of the Clinton administration, the FDA submitted its long awaited policy on genetically engineered foods. The policy, which was originally proposed in May of 2000, will not require labeling of genetically engineered food, nor will it require mandatory pre-market safety testing of genetically engineered products. Instead, the FDA encouraged voluntary labeling of biotech products, requiring only that biotech food producers engage in "consultations" with the FDA in which they submit information on their products. The information must be submitted to the FDA within 120 days of marketing, and will be made available to the public. "This is a major disappointment for consumers, farmers and environmentalists who were hoping that our regulatory agencies would finally take a real stand," said Dr. Peter Rosset, Co-director of Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, based in Oakland, CA. "Despite a PR offensive claiming that government regulators are finally taking GE foods seriously, closer examination reveals this to be a hollow claim," said Rosset. "These rules, if they can be called that, are not nearly as tough as those for food additives. In reality the FDA is providing industry with a thinly disguised whitewash." The FDA's new rules ignore not only the concerns of environmental, family farm and consumer groups, but also overlook the recommendations made by the Biotechnology Consultative Forum. In a report released in December of 2000, the BCF, an international panel of experts who represent both sides of the biotech debate, advised the Clinton administration to require mandatory labeling of GE foods in order to protect consumers' right to informed choices about what they eat. "The proposed rules appear to provide a security blanket to the biotech industry at the expense of public health, the environment, and the few businesses that choose not to use GE foods," said Ms. Anuradha Mittal, also Co Director at Food First. Companies that label their foods as GE-free must bear the cost of labeling, and must verify their claims through chain of custody documentation, test results, or be certified organic, while who do use GE ingredients face no such hurdles. "It is critical that informed citizens make their voices heard at the FDA," said Ms. Mittal. "In the past we reversed poor organic standards from the USDA," she added. "Now it is time to let the FDA know what we think," she said, in reference to the highly successful letter writing campaign during the USDA public comment period which reversed that agency's position. Take Action! The FDA is allowing for an open commentary period until April 3, 2001. Write to FDA Commissioner Jane Henney and tell her that the new policy is insufficient. Tell her you are disappointed that the FDA continues to ignore the safety concerns of consumers and chooses instead to help the companies developing biotech products. Demand that she change the policy on GMO food to one that protects the rights of the consumer. A sample letter follows. Send your e-mails to fdadockets@oc.fda.gov, subject re: dockets . 00N-1396 and 00D-1598, or write to: FDA Commissioner Jane Henney Dockets Management Branch (HFA 305) Food and Drug Administration 5630 Fisher‚s Lane, rm. 1061 Rockville MD 20852 For the full text of the FDA rules, visit: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/oc/ohrms/advdisplay.cfm For more information about issues surrounding biotechnology, see Food First's website at: http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/biotech Sample Letter: Dear Commissioner Henney, The proposed Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations fail to require labels or safety tests on genetically engineered (GE) food. The new rules continue to deny Americans the right to know what is in our food, while protecting the economic interests of biotech corporations. Labeling GE foods would protect the public from potential health effects that could only be traced if GE foods can be identified. By refusing to require both labeling and mandatory safety testing of foods, the FDA puts consumer's health at risk, and ignores the recommendations of the Biotechnology Consultative Forum, who in December urged the US to require mandatory labeling of GE foods. I urge you to reconsider this proposal and insure that GE foods are subject to pre-market testing and labeling. Americans have a right to make informed decisions about the food we consume. Sincerely, Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst@foodfirst.org. ____________________________________________________________ T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Topics You Choose. http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01 From notoapec at clear.net.nz Fri Jan 26 13:28:46 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:28:46 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1720] ACTION ALERT- CYBER PICKET LINE AT DAVOS Message-ID: <001601c08750$81c86020$bf84a7cb@notoapec> ACTION ALERT: PLEASE ACT WITH URGENCY BUILD AN INTERNATIONAL CYBER PICKET LINE AT DAVOS The message below is self-explanatory. If you agree with it please immediately send it to the e-mail address below and send a copy to notoapec@clear.net.nz Please also ring the number below if you want to make your view direct. This message has originated from the APEC Monitoring Group in Aotearoa (New Zealand), organisers of the anti-Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings and protests in Auckland New Zealand in 1999. We are part of the international anti-globalisation movement. The activities of the "labour leaders" in Davos can be found at: www.global-unions.org/davos.asp Thank you ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ TO: THE NINE INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION REPRESENTATIVES AT DAVOS EMAIL: noel.howell@union-network.org PHONE: ++41-79-446 2703 PROTEST DON'T PARLEY RESPECT THE INTERNATIONAL CYBER PICKET LINE While almost 1,000 armed soldiers and thousands more police guard Davos, you, nine "international trade union leaders" have decided to join the World Economic Forum from 25 to 30 January 2001 and eat, drink and parley with members and representatives of the international exploiting class. You are: Sharan Burrow (President of the Australia Council of Trade Unions) Dr Ursula Engelen-Kefer (DGB Germany) Emilo Gabagilo (General Secretary, European Trade Union Confederation) Kenneth Georgetti (President, Canadian Labor Congress) Philip Jennings (General Secretary, Union Network International) Jay Mazur (President UNITE!, USA) Fackson Shamenda (President Zambia Congress of Trade Unions) John Sweeney (President AFL-CIO, USA) Thousands of people have vowed to continue the anti-globalisation momentum from Seattle, Washington, Chiang Mai, Okinawa, Melbourne and Prague and come to Davos to once again protest at the anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-indigenous, anti-women globalisation agenda. Thousands more are attending an alternative World Social Forum in Brazil. While these activities are designed to isolate the WEF and its rotten ideology, you are breaking this solidarity in joining this forum of reaction. No doubt you say that you are there to argue for the workers' cause. However simply by attending you are turning their back on this cause and playing into the hands of those who continue to exploit the international working class for their own ends. Even your publicised topics at the WEF are not opposing globalisation. John Sweeney is talking on "Addressing the backlash against globalisation" and Bill Jordan "Partnering for the Future". The World Economic Forum is nothing less than a pro-capital, pro-corporate, pro-imperialist, pro-rich club. It even claims to have been instrumental in the development of the modern globalisation project. While other unionists including New Zealand Trade Union Federation President Maxine Gay will attend the alternative and anti-WEF activities you, the gang of nine, will be "protected" from our sisters and brothers by the suspension of civil liberties in Davos enforced by thousands of Swiss troops and police. We urge you to respect the international cyber picket of the WEF withdraw from the WEF activities and rejoin the solidarity of those resisting globalisation. Name: Union (if appropriate) Country: From amittal at foodfirst.org Sat Jan 27 04:56:11 2001 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 11:56:11 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1721] *** Job Opening - Senior Analyst/Economist *** Message-ID: <0.700000824.122886435-951758591-980538971@topica.com> ***Please Post Widely*** Senior Analyst/Economist Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy is a progressive, independent, non-profit think tank engaged in analysis, research, advocacy, and education-for-action on hunger and poverty, environmental degradation, and alternative development policies for the Third World and for the U.S. (http://www.foodfirst.org). The Senior Analyst/Economist will conduct economic-social research, analysis, writing, public speaking, media appearances and networking forour two principles program areas, Economic and Social Human Rights Program, and Re-Shaping the Global Food System. Responsibilities include: • Provide senior level support to both programs. • Conduct economic-social research on issues such as welfare reform, hunger, underemployment, agriculture, corporate concentration in the food system, impacts of trade policy and economic globalization in the U.S.; andland reform, small farm productivity, trade and agriculture policy, rural development, poverty, alternative food systems, and impacts of globalization and structural adjustment in the third world. • Produce analytical reports putting forth and justifying Food First's positions on these issues. • Put forth alternative policy options consistent with Food First valuesand mission. • Write for a variety of audiences, from academics and policy makers to activists and the general public. • Speak on behalf of Food First in a variety of public foras and in the media. • Help develop networks of collaborators, partner organizations, funders, etc. Qualifications include: Should have substantial experience in similar work, preferably with a graduate degree in a related field (ideally a Ph.D. or M.A. with comparable experience in economics), must have a proven record of excellence in research, analysis, writing for diverse audiences, public speaking and media work, networking, and substantial experience as an activist for social change. Must have demonstrated commitment to the values and mission of Food First, must be a cooperative, energetic and collaborative team player, must have leadership qualities, must be comfortable in writing for and speaking to diverse audiences, and must be flexible, willing and interested to work on diverse issues as described above. Must be able to juggle multiple projects simultaneously. Name recognition/reputation as 'expert,' a plus. Salary commensurate with experience. Letter, cv, 3 references and writing samples to Hiring Committee, Food First, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA, 94618, USA. Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst@foodfirst.org. ____________________________________________________________ T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Topics You Choose. http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01 From notoapec at clear.net.nz Mon Jan 29 17:54:02 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:54:02 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1722] NZ Trade Union Fed President injured in Davos Demo Message-ID: <004601c089d1$0a1fcbc0$5acea7cb@notoapec> 28 January 2001 Trade Union Federation Leader injured in Davos Maxine Gay, President of the New Zealand Trade Union Federation has her arm in plaster after breaking her wrist during the anti-World Economic Forum activities in Davos Switzerland. She and other anti-WEF activists were forced by police to take a treacherous route back to their guest house in the icy sub-zero conditions rather than the well lit and ice free main road. Maxine slipped and broke her wrist in the fall. Maxine Gay was one of the few anti-WEF people to get into Davos over the last few days. She was there to attend the "Public Eyes on Davos" Conference that took place only a few hundred metres from the WEF Conference Centre in Davos. Many participants and speakers for the conference were turned back by armed troops and police at Swiss frontier borders and also at the nearby town of Landquart. The following is her final report from Davos. "Many of those turned back were young and with long hair. The police targeted them as being potential "violent demonstrators". Perhaps my "motherly looks" enabled me to enter the town. "The police and troops were especially nervous of the planned demonstration that was scheduled for the afternoon of Saturday 27 January. On the morning of the 27th Davos was completely cut off from the outside world. Trains carrying those wishing to demonstrate were turned back at Lanquart and armed police and soldiers patrolling the streets of Davos detained anyone they thought may be a protester. "Despite all the difficulties, around 500 people still managed to assemble at the Davos railway station. "However as we moved off onto the main street the police came from behind as well is in front. The police used huge assault vehicles with guns mounted on the top and had smaller vehicles with steel gates attached to the front. The demonstrators were then completely fenced in and sprayed with water. "The police / soldiers outnumbered the demonstrators by about 5 to 1. They were carrying tear gas canisters, riot shields and guns. Some of the scenes were reminiscent of Tiananmen. "The more than 1,000 people stranded at Lanquart and unable to reach Davos were dispersed with tear gas dropped on them from helicopters. "An interesting debate developed at the Public Eyes Conference regarding the decision of the WTO to hold its next Ministerial meeting in Qatar. Qatar is an absolute monarchy and is known for restricting freedom of assembly association. The initial response of participants was to oppose the holding of the WTO in a place as undemocratic as Qatar. However, we had to ask ourselves after the Davos experience is Switzerland any better yet it hosts the WTO, the ILO and the UN Human Rights institutions. "The democratic veneer of countries such as Switzerland, which capitulated to Nazism in WW II can be seen to be very thin." From amittal at foodfirst.org Tue Jan 30 03:55:52 2001 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 10:55:52 -0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1723] Peter Rosset talks about the Zapitistas Message-ID: <0.700000824.80904607-951758591-980794552@topica.com> San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, January 28, 2001 NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE by Lewis Dolinsky On to Mexico City Like the World Bank and the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, Mexico, the Oakland organization Food First believes land reform is essential to alleviating poverty. Peter Rosset, co-director of Food First, is back briefly from Chiapas; he is spending two years telecommuting from the pleasant colonial town of San Cristobal. Its mestizo residents consider themselves the frontline between Western civilization and the barbarians (Mayans). Imagine the shock on Jan. 12, when 8,000 masked indigenous people (including rebels) marched into town, stayed four hours, then faded away. Zapatistas have flair; Rosset thinks it is their media savvy, not their guns, that Mexican President Vicente Fox fears. He plans to govern, Clintonesque, with focus groups, polls and public relations - but the rebels are headed his way, threatening to steal the spotlight. They say their executive committee of 24, including Subcommander Marcos, will leave Chiapas on Feb. 25, go through nine states and end up in Mexico City on March 6 to speak to Congress. By then, they may have an entourage of several hundred thousand. The media credit Fox for meeting the Zapatistas more than halfway - freeing political prisoners, shutting some army bases that are near the rebels and removing military checkpoints. Rosset says many of the checkpoints were restored, soldiers get shuffled to another base in the area and most of the prisoners are still locked up. The 1996 accords between rebels and government were finally submitted to Congress last month, but Fox has not pushed for passage. Zapatistas say: Won't be fooled again. Subcommander Marcos is widely known as the leader of the Zapatistas. Rosset says that although Marcos is the group's spokesman and military chief, its overall leader is Commander Tacho. Rosset describes Tacho as "very measured, strong and intelligent" but uncomfortable speaking Spanish. So the flamboyant Marcos, who is no Mayan, became the voice and masked face of the movement. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001 SF Chronicle Join the fight against hunger. For more information contact foodfirst@foodfirst.org. ____________________________________________________________ T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Topics You Choose. http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01 From notoapec at clear.net.nz Tue Jan 30 07:32:50 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:32:50 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1724] ADB Watch Hawaii Message-ID: <002201c08a43$8ae85de0$c684a7cb@notoapec> A GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION FROM ADBWATCH HAWAI'I Join the campaign against the Asian Development Bank ADB Annual Meeting * Honolulu May 9-11 Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Events May 5-11 2001 No Aloha for the ADB ! Join the Global Movement for Justice! Expose the Destructive Policies and Projects of the ADB! The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a multilateral sister of the World Bank that funds projects which create poverty and undermine local control and cultural rights throughout Asia and the Pacific. The ADB is holding its Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawai'i from May 9-11. Parallel NGO event opportunities May 5th to May 11th ADBwatch Hawai'i invites you to join in and create non-violent activities and events challenging globalization and the ADB's record of imposing destructive and oppressive policies, projects and programs on communities throughout Asia and the Pacific. ADBwatch is a broad coalition of people working for economic justice in Hawai'i, and includes youth, students, economic and environmental justice and human rights activists, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cultural rights activists, clergy, academia, and unions. The ADB Annual Meeting was originally scheduled for Seattle but after massive WTO protests in Nov/December of 1999, the venue changed to Honolulu with the expectation of avoiding resistance and scrutiny. At last year's ADB Annual Meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 5,000 Thai villagers and farmers protested for 3 days against water usage fees being imposed by the ADB. Keep the pressure on! Help to expose ADB's destructive policies and show the world there is no Aloha for the ADB. Show the World that There is NO ALOHA FOR THE ADB!! ADBwatch challenges financial institutions that perpetuate economic terrorism. Our goals: a.. Educate the public on specific ways that ADB (and globalization) increases the gulf between rich and poor b.. Identify ways that globalization impacts people and resources in Hawai'i c.. Identify the impacts of globalization on cultural and economic rights of indigenous peoples Help to unravel the corporate myth of Hawai'i as paradise. Hawai'i is occupied by the US military, colonized politically and economically and we face serious pollution problems. The rights of the Kanaka Maoli are under serious increasing attack by the US and state governments and now by organized right and Campaign for a Colorblind America, a conservative racist, anti-affirmative action organization. WHAT CAN YOU DO? - Forward this message to as many people as possible! - Join our Listserv: Stay in the loop on events in Honolulu, learn about ADB's events, plan an event and coordinate with other planned events: adbwatch-hawaii-subscribe@egroups.com - For Information on international organizing around the ADB annual meeting in Honolulu, join the International Listserv: adbwatch-international-subscribe@egroups.com - Check out our (evolving) website http://www.crosswinds.net/~hexis/ADB-Watch.html For ADBwatch Factsheet and links to NGOs working on ADB and globalization issues - Get your organization and its members involved sign a pledge of support - Invite speakers to your workplace, school, group to address globalization and the ddddADB! - Get involved: with publicity, educational info, transportation, legal assistance, and accommodations - Make a donation to the ADBwatch campaign fund! Make checks out to ADBwatch/HIHR. - If you plan to come here, please educate yourselves about the overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation and the current court challenges attempting to disempower and illegitimatize the Kanaka Maoli people - If you plan to come here to protest, you must agree to a non-violent pledge of resistance GIVE FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO ADBWATCH! ADBwatch is small and very low budget. Any support would be greatly appreciated and tax-deductible through The Hawaii Institute for Human Rights. Your support is needed! Access to funding is severely limited in Hawai'i. Please help by sending donations. Funds will be used to help bring people here from Asia and the Pacific and for education about the role and history of the ADB. For more information, contact us: ADBwatch UH-Hawai'i Manoa 2465 Campus Road RIO Box A-4 Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 adbwatch@lava.net -- KAHEA The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance P.O. Box 714 Honolulu, Hawai'i 96808 Cha Smith, Executive Director tel/ fax (808) 841-2176 kahea-alliance@hawaii.rr.com http://www.actionnetwork.org/ KAHEA is a network of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cultural practitioners, environmental activists and others working to protect Native Hawaiian cultural rights and our fragile environment From notoapec at clear.net.nz Wed Jan 31 08:28:25 2001 From: notoapec at clear.net.nz (APEC Monitoring Group) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 12:28:25 +1300 Subject: [asia-apec 1725] Duro union under attack by Mexican government: letters Message-ID: <002701c08b14$a03e0600$d9cfa7cb@notoapec> De: Robin Alexander Fecha: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 15:54:34 -0500 Asunto: EMERGENCY: Duro union under attack by Mexican government: letters needed now! Mexican Government to Hold Hearing Tomorrow Questioning Legitimacy of Duro Workers' Union; 20 Duro Workers Fired as Fox Government Shows Its Hand Instead of setting a date for an election in the case of Duro Bag Manufacturing, the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (FCAB) in Mexico City has ruled that the independent union's leaders must come to a yet another hearing on January 31st to determine if their union even has standing to be on the ballot. According to the workers' lawyer, the FCAB is violating its own procedures just to stall the election. With this ruling, the new Fox administration has shed its populist mask and revealed the true face of direct corporate rule. Despite his statement last Friday in Davos Switzerland that, "Today I am telling the whole world that Mexico is a great nation and that its power is in the soul of its people who know how to struggle in the fervent desire to achieve a life with dignity for all", and despite his promises during the campaign to respect Freedom of Association, Fox is doing nothing to help the workers struggle for dignity. In fact, he has appointed the former head of COPARMEX (the coalition of industrial employers), Carlos Abascal, to head the Department of Labor and Social Welfare, and it's a COPARMEX lawyer who has taken over representation of Duro at the FCAB. Meanwhile, last Friday night, as Duro Bag workers waited for a decision to schedule the union election from the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (FCAB), management fired 20 workers for allegedly communicating information to their union and for organizing. This culminated a week of captive audience meetings in which Duro allowed the Secretary General of the National Paperworkers Union (CTM) (the union that had made a series of sweetheart contracts with Duro and which the independent union was trying to replace), to shut down assembly line-by-line and take the workers to the cafeteria to tell them not to vote for the Duro Workers Union because it was a foreign union which wanted to take the work back to the U.S. and close the plant. Then, at a meeting with the second shift on Friday, he asked who would vote for the "outside" union. When all hands shot up, he said, "This is not a threat but Alejandro de la Rosa (head of HR) is over there taking notes, and he'll fire anyone who does." After that, they fired twenty workers. Actions Needed 1. By Wednesday, please send a fax or email to President Fox with a copy to Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, Carlos Abascal and to Virgilio Mena Becerra, President of the Federal Conciliation & Arbitration Board. Sample letter below Email President Vicente Fox from his web page either by going to then select Tablero de Mensajes or by going directly to http://www.melodysoft.com/cgi-bin/gbook.cgi?ID=fox2000&do=sign Carlos Abascal's email is cabascal@stps.gob.mx Virgilio Mena Becerra is vmena@stps.gob.mx and fax is 011-52- 5761-0022 (but you have to say "tono de fax por favor" when they answer). Dear President Fox: During your campaign you pledged to respect the Twenty Principles of Freedom of Association, and in your speech last week at Davos you talked about a "life with dignity for all", yet already the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board is working hand-in-hand with COPARMEX and the Duro Bag Company of Rio Bravo Tamaulipas to deny workers their legal right to a union election or recuento for which they have been waiting for over four months. In addition, on Friday, Duro fired twenty workers for union organizing, a flagrant violation of Mexican law. We ask you, how long will the Duro workers have to wait for you to fulfill your promises? Tell the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board to schedule the recuento, to conduct a fair and democratic election in a neutral location with secret ballot and independent monitors, and to order Duro to immediately reinstate the fired workers. Respectfully, 2. We are planning to increase pressure on Duro and Hallmark with demonstrations first for Valentine's Day against Hallmark and later at Duro headquarters. If you can help organize a demonstration at a Hallmark store in your city, please immediately contact Judy Ancel at jancel@igc.org . We will provide advice on how to do it, a flyer for duplication, and a press release. 3. The Duro Workers need funds, especially now that twenty more are fired. The constant trips to Mexico City for hearings, the hundreds of flyers to distribute, and the gas for house calls are urgent needs. Please send contributions made out to the "Emergency Support Fund" to The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, 530 Bandera Road, San Antonio, TX 78228. All funds raised go directly to the Duro workers. 4. Please help circulate this information as widely as possible Robin Alexander UE Director of International Labor Affairs One Gateway Center, Suite 1400 420 Fort Duquesne Blvd. PGH., PA. 15222-1416 412-471-8919 412-471-8999 FAX Please note new e-mail address above. Labor and related news from Mexico is reported bi-monthly in Mexican Labor News and Analysis. Check it out on our web site: From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Wed Jan 31 23:43:11 2001 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Kevin Yuk-shing Li) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 22:43:11 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1726] World Bank to cut Indonesian aid Message-ID: <3A78247F.31655C38@graduate.hku.hk> INTERVIEW-World Bank to cut Indonesian aid By Joanne Collins JAKARTA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Monday it would cut its $1.2 billion aid programme to Indonesia because it did not want to add to the country's high debt burden and was fearful of giving money to newly-empowered regions. The magnitude of the cut will be decided in Washington on Tuesday and comes as Indonesia is struggling to secure fresh loans from the International Monetary Fund because of its poor progress in economic reforms. "Because of Indonesia's high debt situation and because there is a move toward decentralisation, the World Bank's lending programme will be lower than it was in pre-crisis years," World Bank acting country director for Indonesia Vikram Nehru told Reuters. But he said the cut would come as no surprise to the government which had already agreed to the revised programme. "The actual amounts are being discussed and have been discussed with the government and the government is in agreement with this policy," he said. Indonesia, still suffering badly from the financial crisis of the late 1990s, is one of the World Bank's biggest debtors, owing a total $12.5 billion. Indonesia's total foreign debt stood was about $140 billion by the end of September. LOCAL GOVERNMENTS NOT READY The Bank said it was not happy with the government's progress on decentralisation and feared newly-empowered districts and provinces were not ready to deal with financial matters. "Local governments have very little if any capacity at this point," Nehru said. Indonesia's regional autonomy laws took effect on January 1 and aim to give the country's 30 provinces and more than 300 districts a greater say in running their affairs. Problems with decentralisation was also one of the reasons the IMF stalled on a $400 million in December. Nehru said the cuts were also linked to Indonesia's failure to meet certain economic targets but it was not a key reason. "The level of lending will be clearly linked to progress and policy reforms, he said" SOFTEN THE BLOW Tuesday's meeting of the Bank's board of executive directors is likely to approve a more favourable loan programme for Indonesia, softening the blow of the funding cut. Nehru said there would be more International Development Agency (IDA) loans, which are interest free and have a longer maturity than some of the Bank's other loans. "We are trying to improve the terms by allocating a larger share of IDA loans which are 35-year loans at zero percent interest." He said IDA loans would be blended with its International Bank Restructuring and Development (IBRD) loans which have a 20-year maturity and 6.5-7 percent interest. "The IBRD loans are ones we give on the basis of what we borrow from capital markets...the combination of the two would obviously ease the terms for Indonesia and this is also in recognition of the debt problem," he said. He said the Bank's new funding strategy would be in place for several years but would be revised every six months. ECONOMY BETTER THAN EXPECTED Nehru also said Indonesia's economy was faring better than expected with GDP, wages and excess capacity utilisation all rising, but he was somewhat concerned about inflationary pressures and the lack of investor confidence. "The financial part of the economy, which is really a reflection of what people think about the future, is not doing as well," Nehru said. "Interest rates are beginning to rise, the exchange rate has been decreasing steadily over the year, the risk premiums for Indonesian securities have also been rising -- all these are indications that investors' view the future with some concern." ($1 - 9,400 Rupiah)