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WTO Chief Hit Over Myanmar Membersh



Subject: WTO Chief Hit Over Myanmar Membership

(Excerpt)

WTO chief faces opponents in Seattle 

      Organization is not a tool for the wealthy, Moore says 

                      Saturday, October 2, 1999

                      By BRUCE RAMSEY 
                      SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER 

                      Michael Moore, the New Zealand politician who now
heads the World Trade Organization, had a taste of Seattle yesterday
-- from dignitaries to protesters.

                      "You come to our town, we're going to shut you
down," chanted about 25 protesters at the University of Washington's HUB
Ballroom.

                      "Who elected you?" shouted a protester as Moore
showed up for a breakfast meeting.

                        Moore was selected after long politicking among the
WTO's 134 member governments which make decisions by consensus rather than  
majority vote.
                       "I would have liked to have been called 'the New 
Zealand candidate,'" he said. In the  eyes of the Asian and European
press, "I was always, 'the American candidate.'"

                      Moore visited Seattle yesterday in preparation for
the WTO conference, which will be held in the city from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3.

                      While in town yesterday, Moore disputed the
opponents' image of the  WTO as a shadow government in Geneva overruling
national laws.
        
              "We are an organization of sovereign governments,"
he said.

                      He repeated many times that he has no independent
power. At breakfast he said, "People say, 'You've got too much
power.' I'm still looking for this power. I can't find it."

                      In negotiations to create WTO rules, he said, "Any
country has veto power. The United States puts its hand up, and
things stop. Japan puts its hand up, and things stop. The little guys put
their hands up, and things stop."

                      The Washington Council on International Trade, which
arranged Moore's schedule, gave critics several chances to
question him. The largest was a two-hour session at the UW.

                      Richard Feldman, executive director of The Workers'
Center, AFL-CIO, asked why the WTO objects if a country subsidized its
exports, but not if it suppresses labor unions. Suppressing unions, he
said, "is as much a subsidy as giving cash."

                      Moore said labor was the responsibility of the
International Labor Organization in Geneva. The ILO, a legacy of Woodrow
Wilson, does not have WTO-like power to authorize members to penalize
rule-breakers.

                      Larry Dohrs, a labor-rights activist for Myanmar,
said that at least the ILO had kicked out the nation, also known as Burma,
for forced labor.  The WTO has not. How could the WTO justify treating
such a renegade "as a normal country?" he asked.

                      "You'd have to get a consensus to throw anybody out
-- and you wouldn't get it," Moore said.

                      Someone asked: What would the WTO have done if
Hitler's Germany or Pol Pot's Cambodia had been members?

                      "We would have had trouble," Moore said. But he said
it was better to face that than to live in a world in which trade was
left without any rules.

END