World Bank calls protesters 'anti-democratic'

Global protests have spread around the world

by BBC News Online's Steve Schifferes

The World Bank's chief economist, Nick Stern, has told the BBC that the bank will not be intimated by protesters.

He was speaking as the Bank prepares to hold its annual development economists conference online, after cancelling a meeting scheduled to take place in Barcelona on Monday.

Trade talks have been the focus of protests

Mr Stern said the Bank feared anti-globalisation protesters would have intimidated delegates and prevented free discussion.

Some of the protesters had vowed to disrupt the meeting, a threat that Mr Stern called "anti-democratic".

"It seemed there was going to be a deliberate attempt to stop the discussion... they were clearly going to intimidate the ordinary academics and we didn't think it right to try to have a serious analytical discussion on the issues... in that kind of environment," he told BBC News Online.

Mr Stern said the protesters had been invited to participate, but had declined to take part.

He hoped that the online approach would allow a broader participation from people from around the world.

Mr Stern said that he welcomed the fact that young people were concerned about world poverty, but their enthusiasm had to be tempered by analysis and understanding of its causes.

Cyber-hackers sympathetic to the anti-globalisation movement have threatened to hack into the World Bank's online video conference on Monday, which will be taking e-mail questions from around the world.

Trade wars

Mr Stern mounted a vigorous defence of the World Bank's approach, arguing that open economies were the key to rising living standards.

But he conceded that the world's rich countries had not opened up their markets enough to the exports of developing economies.

However, he argued that poorer countries would still gain by free trade in the long run.

And he warned that it would be counter-productive to include labour and environmental standards in future trade talks, calling such proposals "concealed protectionism".

Nevertheless, Mr Stern was relatively optimistic that the world trade talks - stalled since they were abandoned amid demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 - would now resume, citing the sympathetic approach of the new US trade negotiator, Bob Zellick.

The World Trade Organisation hopes to relaunch a new trade round at a meeting in Qatar in November, but has warned that agreement on the agenda must be reached by July.

Africa's lack of governance

Mr Stern also admitted that in sub-Saharan Africa per capita incomes were still falling, as wars, revolutions and corruption had severely damaged economic development.

Child labour: key issue in developing countries

He said the World Bank was actively involved in programmes designed to improve governance, to support civil society, and to give the poor a voice - despite opposition from some governments.

The World Bank has also taken the lead in funding health programmes to deal with the growing problem of Aids/HIV in Africa - the subject of a major UN conference next week.

But some third world pressure groups say that - following the limited cancellation of the debts of some highly indebted African countries - "debt fatigue" is setting in, with little likelihood of the UN raising the $10bn it wants to fight Aids.

"It is obscene that while the Aids epidemic is raging across many of the world's poorest and most indebted countries, the richest countries continue to receive billions of dollars in debt repayments," said Alison Marshall of the World Development Movement.

Debt relief and Aids are also likely to figure high on the agenda of the G8 Summit of world leaders in July in Genoa - and that city is gearing up for the biggest-ever anti-globalisation protest.