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NEW YORK, Jan 31: The five-day meeting of the World Economic Forum opened amid tight security here on Thursday with the world’s top business leaders, politicians and academics at hand to discuss key global issues following the Sept 11 attacks on the United States.
About 3,000 people are expected to participate in the meeting, including German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates and Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan would be represented by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, who is expected to arrive here on Friday. He is expected to meet US Treasury Department officials and finance ministers of Germany and Japan among others.
The United States would be represented by Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Treasury Secretary Paul O’ Neil. President Bush, unlike his predecessor Bill Clinton, has decided not to come to the conference as he is not comfortable in one-on-one discussions with the world leaders.
Even as the participants gathered, the sidelights that have, though, come to mark international financial gatherings were in evidence: police in riot gear, rerouted traffic, concrete barriers around the host hotel.
Leaders of 1,000 “foremost companies” from around the world pay about $25,000 each in annual dues and about $6,000 per participant to attend the annual meeting, and many come back.
“I’ve been coming here for 14 years, and even though it’s expensive, it’s a lot cheaper than trying to meet all these people any other way,” said the Lebanese head of an international trading company who asked not to be identified.
Promoters claimed the delegates would spend between $13 million and $19 million on food, lodging, transportation and shopping. Adding other related spending, some insisted the figure could rise as high as $100 million.
POLICE STATE: New York City around the 10 blocks area of the conference looked like a virtual police state. The law enforcement officials in uniform and undercover outnumbered the demonstrators and people. The police concentration was heaviest near the conference site at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, with officers outnumbering commuters heading to work in some spots.
Police were also posted throughout the city outside Starbucks coffee shops and other chain businesses that have been targeted at past economic conferences.
Leaders of left-wing labour, student and environmental groups insist that daily demonstrations near the forum will be loud, but peaceful. Some protests will feature giant papier-mache puppets, song and dance and street theatre — not the vandalism and violence associated with past conferences, including a 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle that collapsed amid riots and tear gas.
“People have different ways of expressing their outrage,” said Yvonne Liu, a Columbia University student planning to be among the protesters. “But we don’t want to harm people.”
PEACEFUL PROTEST: AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labour Unions) President John Sweeney said on Wednesday the workers will try “to educate people on the need for worker’s rights and for the need to hold corporations accountable.”
“I’m only hopeful that these demonstrations are peaceful ones,”’ Sweeney said when asked whether he thought the daily protests might generate violence.
“Any that we have been involved in, it’s been a relatively small group of people who have been unruly or tried to be disruptive.”
In all, about 4,000 officers are assigned to the event. The Federal Aviation Administration issued an order preventing flights over the hotel.
“I hope it’s going to be peaceful,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly when asked if calm would prevail. “That’s all I can say.”
Authorities are eager to avoid a repeat of last year’s World Economic Forum, which was held in its normal location of Davos, Switzerland. There, protesters angry that authorities kept them from getting near the conference site smashed windows, burned cars and clashed with police.
Police have granted permits to some protest groups, allowing them to demonstrate in designated areas. But authorities have vowed to clamp down on any sort of illegal behaviour, saying they would enforce an 1845 state law barring groups of demonstrators from wearing masks.
The law appears aimed at radical protesters who often wear black masks or scarves during demonstrations. In past protests, it was primarily anarchists who smashed windows or sprayed graffiti — acts that other protesters condemned.
Legal observers wearing red armbands plan to monitor protests outside the forum.
The civil rights lawyers criticized police for promising to make arrests for minor infractions.
“We make a pledge that police officers who are overzealous — we will see those officers in court,” said defence attorney Ron Kuby.
FIRST TIME: The forum is being held somewhere other than Davos for the first time. It was relocated to New York partly out of sympathy for a city hit hard by terrorism and still nervous about the prospect of future attacks.
No binding decisions are ever made at the conference, but participants say the event has added importance this year because it brings together so many powerful players in a city still recovering from the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. Several said they hoped the serious discussions at the forum will help political and economic leaders map out solutions to some of the world’s hardest problems.
But the dissent on the street on Wednesday was not the kind city promoters wanted to hear.
“If this is what security is all about, it’s no longer worth living in the city at all,” said one New Yorker, after cops stopped him when he tried to walk past the Waldorf to the subway station at 51st St and Lexington Ave. “You might as well shut the city down and send everybody home. Then it will be very safe.”
Even some police officers dispatched to the area cops stand to earn an estimated $11 million in overtime pay were grousing about the assignment.
“We didn’t need this,” said one officer. “We’re hurting. The whole city is hurting. They should have kept this in Switzerland.”
