Geneva and in its external relations. It was after Seattle, a WTO official said, that the organization sought urgent means to redress the situation. Mike Moore, the Director General of the WTO sought to streamline the integration of the world's poorest countries by keeping them better informed.

"We need to face up to the situation that there are things in our organization that could work better," he said in Doha this week. "When developing countries say they have not received all the benefits they expected from the Uruguay Round and that the WTO should do better for them, I agree."

His remarks were made in opening comments as ministers from 143 nations gathered in Doha, many of them divided on what the key issues should be to launch a new round of negotiations.

In interviews with this newspaper, WTO offiSuch is the anger, that has been expressed by some governments and nongovernmental organizations, that the organization is looking at ways of improving transparency both internally among the 500 staff at its headquarters in cials insisted that they have redoubled efforts to improve transparency. Of the 49 nations on the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries, 29, of them WTO members, are not represented in Geneva because they cannot afford the cost of keeping trade experts in Switzerland.

Officials said this situation has so concerned Moore that he has traveled widely around the world to get the message across that well managed, humane globalization can help poor countries get wealthier. And he cites the example of South Korea, which 30 years ago was as poor as Ghana in West Africa is today.

To charges voiced in a statement to the WTO Saturday by the Africa, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) group of nations that WTO entry procedures are too cumbersome, and implementation of its trading rules frequently too costly or too complex, an official acknowledged that more could be done. In practice, the smaller and less important a country is in terms of trade, the easier it is to become a member. Thus the fact that it took China 15 years to gain access, while the small Balkan nation Croatia, achieved almost immediate entry.

"Take a small African nation," a WTO official said. "Often its biggest problem is simply changing its legislation to conform with WTO rules. They often do not have the teams of lawyers, constitutional and trade experts, let alone the bureaucrats, to administer the necessary changes involved. The classic example here is when it comes to institutionalizing intellectual property rights."

The same applies to WTO sanitary measures to ensure that goods exported conform with health and safety regulations. The WTO, which currently has an operating budget of approximately $100 million a year, holds regular meetings on all aspects of trade for member governments throughout the year. These are mostly of a complex, technical nature, which even a single representative in Geneva simply cannot cope with. While nations like the US, Japan and the European Union are easily able to have the right expert at every meeting, the official said developing nations which comprise four-fifths of the WTO's membership are either partially represented or not at all.

What are the remedies? The WTO official said the organization has a system of all expenses-paid three-month training seminars for people from developing countries. At these seminars they are given intensive training on every aspect of trade and dispute settlement. Countries without representation are sent daily briefing papers and a monthly summary of WTO activities. Frequently those who attend the training programs return as representatives in Geneva. "We are seeing this happening more and more often," the official said.

Once a year, the WTO also arranges a "Geneva Week" at which the WTO explains the positions and decisions on every key aspect of its work. After the Seattle debacle, the US government proposed that all meetings on disputes, for example, should be open to wider audiences. But when a country like Malaysia objects to such a measure, the meetings remain closed, and many countries around the world do not favor open sessions. To redress that situation, the WTO holds a monthly briefing for NGOs.

So what is the Doha meeting this week all about? That is quite transparent. In a nutshell, under the chairmanship of Qatar's Minister of Finance, Economy and Trade, His Excellency Youssef Hussein Kamal, six so-called Friends of the Chair, are chairing negotiations key issues: Agriculture, implementation, WTO rules (mainly anti-dumping regulations), the environment, investment and competition, and TRIPS on intellectual property and access to medicine. They will each meet with member governments and report back to the chairman. If there are outstanding issues still unresolved, they will then hold smaller meetings with the parties raising questions, and report back to the chairman a second time.

Under WTO rules devised by member governments, the six committees meet behind closed doors, and once their deliberations are complete, each "friend" reports to the main plenary meeting. The plenary is also publicly addressed by the representative of every government in the organization.