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DEVELOPMENT: Lula, Vajpayee Make Demands of Wealthy G8

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 2 2003 (IPS) - One should never squander an opportunity, especially when one can make the truth be heard, said Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defending his participation and that of other developing nation leaders in this year’s summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful nations.

When the invitation arrived to attend the summit, which runs through Tuesday in the French alpine city of Evian, many wondered what the Brazilian president would have to do there, where ”in the end it is a meeting of the world’s eight richest countries,” he commented.

Those who opposed Lula’s trip warned that the summit would give way to major protests, as in fact occurred with the massive and at times violent demonstrations in the nearby Swiss cities of Lausanne and Geneva, and in France’s Annemasse. Security forces have kept Evian off-limits to activists.

The critics said the Brazilian president runs the risk of ”being confused” for a head of state or of government of one of the G8 members: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

But the visit to Evian produced positive results, said Lula, a former metalworker and union leader, and a founder of his Workers Party (PT), in a speech Monday at the headquarters of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva.

”When I was sworn in I said that I would not waste any opportunity that presented itself. Life is made of opportunities,” said Lula.

And he made the most of the Evian opportunity. To the leaders of the G8 and of 11 developing countries gathered there he communicated his concern about the discrimination that poor nations face in gaining access to the markets of rich nations.

In direct language, aimed at the industrialised countries, Lula complained about the subsidies war and about other protectionist mechanisms that create trade exclusion.

A similar tack was taken by India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his presentation to the summit, but with a concentration on development and environmental issues.

In terms of development, the concerns of the Indian government are focused on the fate of the round of international trade negotiations launched by the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001.

That process of talks is running behind schedule due to failure to comply with the established deadlines, and requires new points of reference for the follow-up of the application of decisions taken in the Doha Declaration, said Vajpayee.

Those points must include the matters of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, agreements on the trans-border movement of persons, and poor countries’ access to vital medicines, he said.

Speaking before the leaders of the G8 countries, nearly all of which maintain protectionist policies for farm trade, India’s prime minister demanded the elimination of agricultural subsidies, which he said have distorting effects on trade.

But Vajpayee stressed that the position of his country is to protect the interests of the farmers in developing countries.

He called for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international instrument aimed at regulating emissions of greenhouse gases, the implementation of which has been delayed by the withdrawal of the United States and the reticence of other industrialised countries.

Vajpayee, Lula and the heads of state from other developing nations were limited to participating only in the Sunday inauguration of the Evian summit.

European Commission President Romano Prodi acknowledged that in the initial portion of the meet the presence of so many leaders from the developing South contributed towards ”changing the atmosphere” of the summit, which was expected to be bogged down in controversy due the tensions that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq created between Washington and the European governments.

But the subsequent resolutions of the G8 served as an indicator that the internal discord had attenuated.

The bloc of wealthy nations approved decisions on aid policies for Africa, corporate responsibility, international trade, and contributions of resources to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In regards to the G8 resolution on trade, activist Barry Coats, of the London-based World Development Movement, predicts that the eight will once again press developing countries to open their markets.

Meanwhile, said Coats, the G8 countries refuse to eliminate their massive farm subsidies and the barriers for value-added products and textiles.

Lula also alluded to those points in his speech at the ILO, when he called for the introduction of ”true changes” in areas like international trade.

The Brazilian government says it is unacceptable that the sectors in which developing countries are competitive – such as agro-industry, textiles and metalworks – are subject to the protectionist trade policies of the industrialised nations.

Lula outlined his ”Zero Hunger” plan to the G8 members, the policy launched in January, just after he took office, and which he championed at the World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The resources for ”giving food to those who are hungry” could come from a tax on international weapons trade and from a mechanism that encourages rich countries to invest in a fund a portion of the interests they receive from indebted countries.

Vajpayee also made mention in Evian of creating a global development fund that could be financed with resources collected in a tax on international financial flows. Dubbed the ”Tobin Tax”, after the Nobel economist, James Tobin, who first proposed it, this is a measure demanded by non-governmental organisations specialising in development and debt issues.

In Geneva, Lula, a former union leader, also spoke his truths about the role of labour organisation in society today.

”The workers’ movement needs to be less corporatist and more political. Many of the things that happen in the labour world are decided outside of that world,” said the Brazilian president.

”That is where we often have to get ahead of ourselves. If the union movement doesn’t adopt this stance, many non-union organisations will step in to occupy the space that should be of the union,” he said.