October 25, 2001	Thursday	Shaba'an 7, 1422

PARIS, Oct 24: The upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Qatar should be used to ensure globalisation does not mean more prosperity for some and greater poverty for others, Czech President Vaclav Havel said on Wednesday.

Globalization needs to be channeled to serve humanity and its fruits have to be distributed more equitably, Havel wrote in an article published by the International Herald Tribune newspaper.

Mutual interconnection and the opening of markets must continue in such a way that the cult of instant material benefit does not take absolute precedence over other values, he wrote.

Havel called for a new and sufficiently broad-based round of trade negotiations, in which every participant gains something for himself and at the same time shows understanding for the interests or concerns of others.

The WTO talks are scheduled to take place on November 9-13 in the Qatari capital Doha.

Even the smallest and poorest countries should be able to prevent acceptance of a decision that is unacceptable to them, he wrote.

Every participant should have the authority to engage in issues of global importance.

The planned WTO talks in Qatar have been under a cloud since the September 11 attacks on the United States, with security fears linked to the venue adding to deep divisions between the 142 member countries over trade issues.

On Tuesday, Singapore said it had been informed that the talks would be going ahead as planned in the Gulf state.

Havel, 65, is a prominent playwright as well as a politician.

In the 1970s and early 1980s he was a leading dissident against the political system in what was then Czechoslovakia.

After the collapse of communism he became president of the country in 1989, and carried on as president of the Czech Republic after it was separated from Slovakia in 1992.—AFP