January 10, 2003	Friday	Ziqa’ad 6, 1423

WASHINGTON: The United States should add an economic component to its war on terrorism by making a strong push to integrate Muslim countries into the world trading system, several trade experts said this week.

“What’s clear is that since 1980 the population of the Muslim Middle East has nearly doubled and at the same time it’s share of global trade has plummeted 75 per cent,” former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky told Reuters.

“This is a very dangerous situation for the United States. US trade policy must turn its attention to programmes that enhance the integration of the Muslim Middle East, including with Israel ultimately.”

The US should work with other Western nations to bring Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Algeria into the World Trade Organization and should consider preferential trade packages to help them diversify their economies, she said.

Outside the oil sector, many Muslim countries have few products they export to the rest of the world. The dearth of job opportunities, combined with a well educated and frustrated population, has created a volatile mix, Barshefsky said.

Ed Gresser, director of the trade and global markets project at the Progressive Policy Institute, said a few statistics illustrate how Muslim countries in both the Middle East and Asia lag in economic development.

Since 1980, the share of world trade held by the 57 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference has fallen from 15pc to just 4pc.

The same countries — with a combined population of 1.3 billion — attracted $13.6 billion worth of foreign direct investment in 2001. That is just $600 million more than Sweden, which has 9 million people.

‘ANGRY, RADICALIZED PEOPLE’: With more Muslims living in cities and fewer jobs available, “you have an economic environment that is naturally going to create angry and radicalized people,” said Gresser.

A preferential trade package could help deal with that problem by providing more job opportunities to young Muslim men addressing an apparent unintentional tilt in US trade policy against Muslim countries, he said.

While the United States has cut tariffs on textiles and other products for countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, it has not developed a similar package for Muslim countries.—Reuters