HAVEL IN BID TO STAVE OFF WORLD AID PROTESTS IN PRAGUE. Czech President Vaclav Havel brought leaders of the IMF and the World Bank together with their critics yesterday in the hope dialogue would replace demonstrations as the keynote of this week's gatherings, Reuters reports. Havel had hoped that high-level discussions between the financial institutions and critics of their policies on the sidelines of the institutions' annual meetings would take the steam out of protests and prevent violence. But there appeared to be limits to the ideological concessions anti-poverty critics and the heads of the Fund and the Bank would make to each other, regardless of the civility of the forum, the story says.
"We consider the termination of these institutions and the cancellation of the debt of poor countries to be essential conditions for a solution on world poverty," said panel member Katerina Liskova of Czech human rights group Nesehnuti. South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who is also head of the board of governors of the IMF this year, responded by saying, "To ask that these two institutions be shut down is to ask for the world's poor to be left to their own devices," responded.
Reuters notes in a separate report that ministers in Prague rallied behind the global lenders and said the demonstrators were missing the point. "When they say no to globalization, they really don't understand," said French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius, describing the IMF and the World Bank as "transparent" and "effective" institutions that listened to suggestions.
BBC Online quotes World Bank President James Wolfensohn as telling the protest groups, "You should not regard us as a black, evil force. Our objectives are very similar to those of the people in the streets." Bloomberg also quotes him as saying, "We are trying to contribute to a better world. What we have realized is that the Bank can't do it alone, and to meet the challenge of poverty, which is the prevailing challenge of our time, we need a dialogue. But there are images of our institutions that make dialogue difficult."
Reuters continues that international financier George Soros said the protesters should rather pressure their governments to provide more funding to a reformed World Bank and IMF, because otherwise the poor countries would only be left to themselves. Ann Pettifor, activist at the Jubilee 2000 group campaigning for debt relief for poor countries, said the G7 rich nations were the proper target rather than the "civil servants" at the Bank and the Fund. "We must not go for the soft targets, but for the hard targets which are our finance ministers and leaders." El País (Spain, 9/23) also reports, quoting Pettifor as saying, "Those who command are the G7."
Further, BBC says Czech radio reported that the Initiative Against Economic Globalization (INPEG) refused to take part in the meeting. Spokesman for the anti-globalization activists Viktor Piarecky said there was no reason for them to hold talks with the IMF and the World Bank: "There will be no space for us to express our opinion. More importantly, we are expected to lead this discussion with representatives of banned organizations which we criticize. We do not think it is necessary to hold talks with people like these," he told the radio station.
Czech news agency CTK reports that a "counter summit" organized by INPEG drew few participants. The "Countersummit 2000" was held at three different places in Prague. Themes included environmental debt, which INPEG says the world banking organizations and industrial countries owe to developing countries, and trade unions' rights and the position of the working people.