. /.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/MIN(99)/ST/71
1 December 1999
(99-5268)
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
Third SessionSeattle, 30 November - 3 December 1999Original:  English
ST. LUCIA
Statement by the Honourable George Odlum
Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
 I come from a country where the name WTO is a dirty word.  I come from a small,
developing, island where the banana farmers, if they had been able, would have been here in Seattle
this week, marching and shouting with the prot estors on the streets around this convention centre,
calling for the dismantling of the WTO.  I come from a region where the people are here in spirit with
the anti-WTO demonstrators outside.
Their attitude is not born of ignorance of what the WTO stands for.  On the contrary, it has
been forged from the bitter experience of WTO rulings and Panel reports, which is marginalizing
them, by depriving them of access to a banana market on which not only their livelihood, but the
future of the economies of so many of our Caribbean countries depend.  It is an experience learnt fromtheir betrayal by a country they had considered a friend, who, in the name of a so-called crusade for
liberalized trade, sold them out for th e profits of a multinational corporation.
The modalities and consequences of the US-led challenge to the European banana marketing
regime at the WTO are the strongest indictment yet of the new trading system governed by the WTO.
The banana chapter has laid naked the fundamental flaws, inequalities, and injustices of that system.
We found that in the name of liberalization, the system gives scant consideration to the
special situation and needs of small, economically disadvantaged developing countries.  We
discovered that its dispute settlement mechanism relegated us, whose very livelihood and survival was
at stake, to a third party status, barely able to raise our voices at its hearings and even having to
defend the composition of our delegations.  We watched as the system permitted an economicallypowerful country to be a complainant, even thoug h that country does not grow or export a single
banana.  We saw it allow that country to have more of a say than us, and to profit from our plight, by
imposing sanctions on those who have been assisting us by honouring their international legal
commitments under the Lomé Convention.
And so we have come to Seattle to say "NO, NO, NO, NO!"
No, to the central purpose of this gathering as orchestrated by those who have assumed the
role of being an economic directorate of the world!  No to dictatorship and the imposition of the
economic ideology of the strong! No to globalizati on without ethics!  No to liberalization without
equity! No to globalization without inclusion!  No to liberalization without human security!  No to
globalization without sustainability!  And above all, no to liberalization without development.
How can we, the world's deprived countries, be expected to come here, to this WTO that was
supposed to be the epitome of democracy, to put the seal of approval on a declaration that has beendeveloped by "Green Room" procedures to which we have had no access;  to discussions in corridors
to which only the economic power blocs are privy;  to texts from which are expunged every vestige ofWT/MIN(99)/ST/71
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the concept of development – with no sensitivity to the plight of the poorest and the smallest among
us?  No, we cannot!
We must halt, if not stop, this mad rush to human destruction in the name of "liberalization" –
it is not the first time in history that virtuous word s are used to describe vicious deeds.  The injustices
inherent in the present system will persist until the advocates of liberalization remove their
rose-coloured glasses and view global commerce from the perspective of developing countries like
our own.  The playing field will never be level.  The diverse economic endowment of countries has
dictated this;  and it is therefore hypocritical to continue on the pretext that all countries will some day
be equal in a new benevolent system.  The invisible hand of free trade never favours the weak.  It
always makes the strong, stronger.
When the 20th century began, the richest country in the world was only nine times richer than
the poorest.  As we begin the 21st century, the richest country in the world, this, our host country,
is 63 times richer than the poorest.
The squalid battle which the United States has waged against the smallest of the
banana-producing countries in the world has set a tone and a mood of distrust for any new round.  We
cannot be party to a consensus in that mind set of victimization and insensitivity.  We thank the
protestors of Seattle and London for showing greater empathy with the wretched  of the earth than the
Government of the United States.  This might well be a springboard for the evolution of the
Trade Union of the poor.
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