The failure to organise the meetings at Seattle efficiently was a disgrace. The success of international discussions... must never again be threatened by such incompetence

House of Commons International Development Ctte

According to the International Development Committee, the meetings were bound to fail due to the lack of effective preparation and a failure of political will.

"The failure to organise the meetings at Seattle efficiently was a disgrace. The success of international discussions on matters of such enormous importance as world trade must never again be threatened by such incompetence," the report says.

It also criticised the 'half-hearted' appointment of Mike Moore as Director-General of the WTO for just two years as further weakening the negotiations.

"The delay in appointing a Director-General of the WTO and the half-hearted mandate that was subsequently given to Mike Moore seriously undermined his ability" to prepare for the talks, the Committee said.

Role for the poor

The Committee pointed out that when the negotiations began, 73 of the 75 paragraphs in the draft declaration were not agreed, signalling a deep disagreement between the European Union and the US over the scope and purpose of the talks.

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It also pointed out that developing countries felt seriously alienated from the trade talks and were effectively excluded from much of the negotiations.

And it called for an explicit goal of poverty reduction through trade growth in any new round of talks.

And it asked for rich countries to take the initiative in opening their markets further.

"Pro-poor trade liberalisation requires the rich trading blocs to liberalise first, to make sacrifices, to demonstrate a desire to see the developing world enter the trading system," the report said.

No Alternative

The World Development Movement, one of the organisations that had been campaigning against the trade talks, said that the UK should not press for further negotiations until the WTO was reformed.

"We must correct the inequality of the WTO's structures.. where important decisions are made in closed sessions with poor countries literally locked outside in corridors and where multinationals swamp the negotiations with corporate lobbyists," said WDM's Barry Coates.

However, the committee argued that there was no alternative to the WTO except "the economics of the bully".

"We disagree strongly with those who claim that the WTO is an enemy of the world's poor... the WTO is the only place where global trade development can take place in a way shaped by the developing world," it said.

And International Development minister Clare Short sharply criticised the anti-globalisation protesters as naive and romantic, trying to deny the poor the benefits of development.

"Young people in Seattle wearing Nike trainers with mobile phones who organise their demonstrations on the internet and fly in, living the comfortable life of citizens of the kind of countries we live in with access to modern technology and all the fruits of multinational capital, (are) trying to protect the poor of the world from many of the fruits of it," she told MPs.