Global Policy Forum

By Joseph Kahn

Less than a month before thousands of government officials and private experts were scheduled to gather for the first global trade summit meeting in two years, a Bush administration official said today that the threat of terrorism had left arrangements for the meetings in doubt.

Trade officials meeting in Singapore over the weekend said they were concerned that they could not safely gather in Qatar, the Persian Gulf state that had been preparing for the meeting for more than a year. Officials were expected to decide in several days whether to hold a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Doha, Qatar's capital.

The officials said that they were considering alternatives and that Singapore had volunteered to serve as a last-minute site for the negotiations. Some trade officials have also suggested holding the sessions at the W.T.O. headquarters in Geneva.

Bush administration officials said today that if the meeting was moved, logistics and security concerns could force officials to shorten them and reduce the size of the delegations, given the work necessary to find a new location and reserve thousands of hotel rooms on short notice.

The meetings are scheduled for Nov. 9 to 13.

While officials were questioning the site of the meeting, American and European officials in Singapore said that they had reached some agreement on how to harmonize trade rules and ease the flow of goods across borders. They said they had a better chance of settling on a framework for such action than they did in Seattle in 1999, when talks collapsed.

Officials in Qatar and at the W.T.O. continue to maintain that the meetings will take place as planned. Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar and the host of the session, will probably be given the opportunity to announce any decision to choose another site.

The issue is a sensitive one because the United States military uses bases in Qatar, an ally in the war against Iraq and the latest conflict in Afghanistan.

Qatar, moreover, had pledged months ago to provide tight security for the meetings because antiglobalization protest groups had threatened to disrupt the talks as they did those in Seattle.

But Bush administration officials have begun quietly to lay the groundwork for a change. Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative who attended the discussions in Singapore, said trade officials had little choice but to consider their safety.

"As President Bush has said, it's a different world," Mr. Zoellick told reporters today. "We have to take every threat seriously." He stressed that the meetings would still take place within the original time frame even if they are moved.

Uncertainty about the meetings is a blow to the Bush administration, which had sought to use the talks as a way of signaling that a sensitive international meeting could go on as scheduled despite the disruptions caused by the attacks on Sept. 11.

Mr. Zoellick had also argued that the trade discussions themselves, which will focus in part on satisfying the trade demands of poor nations, are needed to solidify the coalition against terrorism.

Some developing countries have expressed skepticism that wealthy countries are any more willing to address their concerns this year than they were two years ago. Poor nations have argued that American and European restrictions on importing textiles and farm goods, as well as American use of antidumping rules to protect manufacturing industries from foreign goods priced below the cost of production, greatly reduces the exports of poor countries.

But trade officials said over the weekend that doubts about the talks did not extend to the substance of trade negotiations themselves.

They said they had made progress in narrowing differences on a range of trade disputes, making it more likely that they could settle on a framework for global talks when the meeting is held. They provided few details on their talks. But officials said they had been working from a draft text that served as the basis for negotiations, rather than with rival drafts as they had in Seattle.

"There's a huge difference," Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner, told reporters today. "It's night and day." Mr. Zoellick agreed, saying, "I think we're better positioned."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.