WORLD SOCIALIST LEADERS MULL GLOBALISATION, REBUFF BLAIR'S "THIRD WAY"
Socialist leaders from more than 140 nations, gathered to mull a joint response to the challenges of globalisation, were opting Monday for traditional values of social justice rather than the liberal approach touted by Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder.
And even Blair and Schroeder, among a bevy of heads of state and government attending the last Socialist International of the millennium, agreed that the old Socialist goals spelled out a century ago remained a cornerstone to left and centre-left policies for the 21st century.
Gathered under a banner proclaiming "a more humane society, a world more fair and just", the 1,000-odd delegates in Paris for the three-day conference were to adopt later Monday a declaration "pledging to give globalisation a social dimension, to make it serve humankind."
A draft copy of the text to be approved later by the movement, now in power in countries across the globe, including in 11 of the 15 European Union states, calls for the cancellation of the debt of the world's poorest nations and for renewed efforts against poverty and hunger.
With many world leaders in Paris, including Argentina's newly-elected President Fernando de la Rua, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a host of diplomatic talks were being organised on the sidelines of the conference proper.
And as leaders of the movement of social democratic -- or democratic socialist -- parties described it "as the globe's sole organised political movement", a note of historic solemnity swept the large hall assembling politicians from every continent, the latest member being Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.
"This gathering," said Blair, "comes at an important time. There is a debate underway about the future of the left. Whether we can set out a vision for the left that can combine our traditional emphasis on social justice with the necessities of the new economy of the 21st century."
"Whether in other words we can stand for fairness and enterprise together. My case is that we can and we must."
"Leave aside labels that are used by the media," Blair added, referring to the business-orientated "Third Way" platform he signed this year with Schroeder, irritating French Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
"When I say New labour means enterprise and fairness, and Lionel (Jospin) says he believes in a market economy but not a market society, we are both saying we must rise to the challenge of change; find different ways, for our own different countries, of reaching the same goals, inspired above all by our true and last values: solidarity, social justice, a community based on opportunity for all."
Schroeder, apparently on the defensive after a string of election losses after only a year in office, also stressed that his party remained attached to the same "basic values" that have bonded the Socialist International for around a century.
The German chancellor, who was marking the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, said Berlin was working for a Europe that was both an "economically efficient continent but also a socially just one."
In a lyrical and much-applauded speech, France's Jospin stressed that the market is no more than "an instrument, an efficient and precious one. But it is only an instrument. It needs to be regulated. It must remain at the service of society."
"We refuse the merchandisation of societies," he said. "Health is not a merchandise. The works of the mind are not merchandise. The work of men is not merchandise."
Globalisation could not be reduced to free trade, he said. "Globalisation is the realisation that mankind has a common destiny."