By Geoffrey Lean (Independent , 22.8.1999)
 

SOME of the world's biggest companies are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for privileged access to key heads of state, ministers and negotiators, at an international conference which will decide the future of world trade.

They have taken up an offer from a committee headed by Microsoft supremo Bill Gates to exploit "a very exciting opportunity" provided by a crucial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - the body which regulates world trade - in Seattle at the end of the year. Both the White House and Sir Leon Brittan, the outgoing Vice President of the European Commission, have protested.

In a letter to the White House obtained by the Independent on Sunday, Sir Leon says that the scheme threatens to have a "devastating effect" on the credibility of the WTO, which is already heavily under fire from development experts, green campaigners and some governments for promoting the interests of big companies against those of poor people, public health and the environment.

The conference will open a new round of negotiations over extending the WTO's powers into new areas of world trade. Some 700 organisations from 73 countries are about to launch a campaign to fight the extension. In a joint declaration, they say the WTO has worked "to prise open markets for the benefit of transnational corporations at the expense of national economies, workers, farmers and other people".

Forty companies - including Proctor and Gamble, General Motors, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Northwest Airlines, Boeing, and the Ford Motor Company, as well as Microsoft - agreed to sponsor the meeting, after receiving a letter offering different levels of access, graded according to the amount of money they give.

The letter, from the Seattle Host Organisation, says that companies who help pay for the conference's running costs will "become part of a process to develop substantive business input to the WTO through a series of business programs".

Yesterday, Ronnie Hall, Trade Campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, commented: "This comes as no surprise. The WTO consistently offers a privileged place to business in its negotiations, at the expense of ordinary people."