The engine is starting to turn, even if slowly.
Bonjour ... welcome to my second long day (and night) at the Ministerial. My schedule is speeding up with the pace of talks. Meeting after meeting, going from one place to the other. Still, I found a moment to catch a glimpse of the media coverage from yesterday and saw they liked the magic wand I used at the opening ceremony. It was in fact given to me in Geneva by one of my secretaries — it's a plastic toy, and it certainly doesn't work! The only magic, in the WTO, is the rare moment of consensus — which only happens as a result of a lot of work. At any rate, I think sometimes you have to use a graphic trick to get people's attention. It surely worked when I said at Cancun that the WTO process of ministerial meetings is medieval...
The setting for this Conference is closer to science fiction. Delegates seem to glide through the air from one level to another in this gigantic capsule of glass and steel, gazing out at a harbour filled with every conceivable form of vessel — cargos, tankers, cruisers, fishing boats — all somehow related to trade. The view from my office into the harbour and the constant transit of ships is fantastic — it's as if I was constantly reminded of the concreteness of these negotiations. If there is ever to be a monument to the benefits of trade, it will surely be raised in Hong Kong.
But enough reverie. The day starts early with my deputies and my staff, before the first meeting with our chairman John Tsang, the three vice-chairs and the Ministers helping him reach out as “friends”. These people are key to keeping all of our Members involved in the negotiating process. My part in keeping the discussions transparent will be to meet throughout the day with individual ministers and groups to share information and keep everything moving forward — a long agenda of meetings, some of them every half hour, without interruption. Sometimes I feel like a shepherd, sometimes like a nurse, or a mid-wife, trying to help Members in a difficult delivery....
B+B for lunch (I mean bread and bananas, of course). On the way for more meetings, I watch the policemen bobbing in their tiny boats on the choppy waters around the convention center. Who are they protecting? I would like to think that they are protecting all of us who have a stake in this conference, the demonstrators outside, the delegates and NGOs inside — everyone — to keep the debate we're engaged in as civilized and productive as possible.
The evening plenary gave us good cause to reflect on the particular plight of some of our developing and poorest members. They talked to us about the importance of cotton and bananas for their economies. The Minister of Chad made a short and very touching appeal for progress in the cotton issue. She spoke of misery and poverty, of human dignity and cooperation. The WTO is about much more than trade — in fact, it is trade that has to do with much more than tariffs and formulae: it connects with people. What those countries were really saying, when they talked about cotton and bananas, is that we MUST deal with their concerns as part of any effort to make trade fair.
The day ended with more consultations, going into the night. I'll go back to the hotel now (3:00 am), try to get a few hours of sleep, and prepare for Thursday (6:00 am). It will be a key day — the middle point of the conference.
Edited 12/15/2005 7:26 am by PascalLamy
Edited 12/15/2005 8:04 am by PascalLamy |
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
