DOHA,
Qatar-"Yes," said the delegate,
the process of selecting the committee chairmen
at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting
in Doha "definitely was not transparent."
"In
fact," said Tadeous Chifamba, of Zimbabwe, "the
selection of the topics themselves was not transparent."
"But we are past that now," he said. "They
are very respected chairmen and we can work with
them."
The
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are not "past
that now." Members of several NGOs staged
a mini-demonstration Sunday against the decision
by WTO chairman, His Excellency Youssef Hussein
Kamal to name six "friends of the chair" to
seek consensus on six difficult trade issues. The "friends" make
themselves available at their hotel rooms and on
cell phone, to anyone who wants to talk to them,
according to Hans Peter Werner a WTO spokesman.
Their meetings, if any, are to be behind closed
doors, he said.
"The problem is there is no transparency
on how they were picked, no transparency on how
they will work, no transparency on where they will
work, and what they will do," said Sarah Wright
of Pressure Point, a Seattle-based NGO working
on corporate reform. "This is a crucial issue.
In (the WTO meeting) Seattle, everything was decided
in so called 'green rooms' without transparency
and that's why it collapsed," she said.
"It is putting a power in the hands of a
few men," said Garry Neil of the International
Network for Cultural Diversity in Ottawa.
"Yes, but..." said a minister-level
delegate who did not want to be identified, "The
most non-transparent are the NGOs themselves."
"Who elected them?," the minister asked. "They
arbitrarily decide what they want to complain about."
"Besides," the minister said " if
all the meetings were all open, the decisions would
then be made in secret, maybe by men meeting somewhere
or running into each other in the bathroom."
Werner,
the WTO spokesman, said "the problem
of transparency did come up, but it was quickly
settled and it is not an issue any more."
"The delegations all accept these people,
and they are all very good at what they do, which
is seek consensus," he said.
Werner
said that the WTO cannot comment on the process,
but "You'll have to take it up with
the governments themselves. It is their procedures,
they made the decisions. They decided to close
the doors. They make the decision to talk to you
or not." A delegate from Ghana said that although "didn't
like the process" the system as of Sunday
was "transparent enough."
"If they made the committee meetings open,
most of the delegates would not go anyway," he
said. "Only the countries with particular
interest in the subject would show up. "
"And
that's what is going on now. These guys are available
almost 24 hours a day, we have their
room numbers, we have their cell phone numbers
and anyone who is interested in the subject can
talk to them."
Chifamba,
of Zimbabwe, who was standing near, said "okay,
for the record, or for next time if we want to
refer
to it, we can say that it wasn't
transparent. But these are all very good men. And
we'll work well with them."
The friends of the chair and their subjects are:
agriculture, George Yeo of Singapore; implementation,
Pascal Couchepin of Switzerland; environment, Heraldo
Munoz Valenzuela of Chile; rule-making, Alec Erwin
of South Africa; new issues. Pierre Pettigrew of
Canada, and intellectual property, Luis Ernesto
Derbez Bautista of Mexico. All are ministers of
their governments.
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