Posted on 08/25/2002 12:13:15 PM PDT by yankeedame
Protesters hit out at 'plot' against poor
By Geoff Hill in Johannesburg and agencies August 26 2002
Conservation and other activist groups threatened protests to close down the Earth summit in Johannesburg after a paper allegedly sponsored by the United States and the European Union was leaked over the weekend.
The environmental organisation Friends of the Earth yesterday joined other protest groups in claiming industrialised countries had already drawn up their final statement to be released at the end of the week-long summit.
Rich countries, headed by the US and the EU, had earlier been accused of trying to hijack the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and there will be fierce lobbying for the votes of countries such as Australia, India and Argentina.
Australia's Minister for the Environment, David Kemp, arrives in Johannesburg today.
The executive director of Friends of the Earth, Charles Secrett, said the group had obtained a leaked paper that "proves that the US and EU will sacrifice the environment and poor countries' needs, all for their own selfish free-trade agenda".
The paper calls for wealthy countries to scrap quotas and import duty on goods that originate in the world's least-developed countries.
But Mr Secrett said there were no binding rules to control what he called "predatory corporations" from doing environmental damage in developing countries.
"It is all about voluntary business action and market expansion," he said.
The summit is billed by the United Nations as the biggest conference in history, with up to 100 heads of state and 60,000 delegates expected to attend.
But with the summit due to officially start this morning, only 20,000 delegates have registered so far.
Non-government organisations and protest groups have called on South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to stand up to the US and EU to safeguard the environment of developing countries.
But he is more likely to be watching reaction to a demonstration outside the conference today by black Zimbabweans living in South Africa. They are demanding that Pretoria impose sanctions against the Government of President Robert Mugabe.
Although there are no official figures, between 1 and 2 million economic refugees from Zimbabwe are estimated to live and work in South Africa.
Their presence is putting pressure on Pretoria, with South African workers claiming the immigrants are taking their jobs.
Britain's Foreign Minister, Jack Straw, yesterday said Mr Mugabe's land reform policies were reducing his people to starvation.
But Mr Straw, writing in The Observer newspaper, said criticism of Mr Mugabe should not dominate the summit.
Britain's Conservative opposition has called on the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is due to address the summit an hour before Mr Mugabe, to boycott the Zimbabwean leader's speech.
Facing international criticism for expelling white farmers from their land, Mr Mugabe retained his most loyal ministers in a surprise cabinet reshuffle on Friday, the official Sunday Mail newspaper said.
It said the ministers retained included the Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, who is in charge of the land seizure program, the Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and the Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo.
The assumption being, of course, that these least-developed countries have much of anything worth importing in the first place.
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