The New York Times

Tuesday, April 18, 2000

World Trade Officials Pledging to Step Up Effort Against AIDS

By JOSEPH KAHN and JOHN KIFNER

WASHINGTON, April 17 -- The world's top financial officials, trying to show sensitivity to poverty as protesters braved a chilling rain and an impenetrable police force outside, pledged to pay more attention to globalization's victims and to commit "unlimited money" to fight AIDS in poor countries.

The finance ministers and central bank governors who oversee the World Bank said the bank should intensify its fight against AIDS because the disease is as much a problem of poverty as public health. More than 50 million people are infected with the virus that causes the disease, and it is spreading fastest in Africa, India, China and the Caribbean, all major World Bank clients. The bank has been active for more than a decade in fighting the disease.

The new commitment on AIDS came as finance officials sought to show that they were at least as focused on helping people and nations that have not benefited much from globalization as they are on speeding the international march of capitalism. They promised to accelerate debt relief for the developing world and to press rich nations to agree to import farm and clothing products from the poorest ones duty free.

But some of their promises are unlikely to be fulfilled soon. Wealthy nations have been slow to commit the money necessary for debt relief, and the World Bank has insisted on an intensive review of how third-world countries will use money made available when debt is forgiven.

The United States also watered down language on duty-free market access in a final communiqu today for fear that any broad commitment to open markets here would prompt a backlash from Congress and undermine support for the Clinton administration's push to grant China permanent normal trade status.

Protests against the World Bank and the I.M.F. wound down in a driving rain today as a small band of demonstrators scuffled with the police early in the morning, and others, their numbers greatly diminished from the more than 10,000 during the weekend, marched through the streets.

After several tense standoffs with lines of helmeted policemen, a strange street party developed as the police agreed to doff their gas masks and peacefully arrest protesters who stepped through a symbolic breach in their barricades in small groups.

Makeshift drums throbbed, puppeteers danced, and beach balls were tossed around as 500 people walked arm in arm in groups of a dozen or so to be taken to buses as the crowd chanted, "We're here! We're wet! Cancel the debt!" The protesters accuse the World Bank and the I.M.F. of spreading the gospel of free-market capitalism to benefit corporations while ignoring the environmental impact of their policies and worsening poverty in many countries.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams said at a morning news conference, "Our police officers and law enforcement officers played it right."

But while disrupting Washington on a Sunday is a small matter -- the downtown is virtually deserted then anyway -- the protesters did manage to close down normal business in the capital today. The city and federal government told many workers to stay home. And the police closed so many streets to traffic that they in effect shut down another major economic power: the lobbying firms along K Street.

Though protesters never managed to disrupt the meetings at the bank and the fund as they had hoped, the turnout of activists put officials on the defensive.

"It was impossible not to be affected," said James D. Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, who complained that the bank was being accused of causing poverty when all of its employees were devoted to alleviating it.

"I come to work every day with 10,000 colleagues who think that they are doing what we are being criticized for," Mr. Wolfensohn said. "I am a bit nonplussed, really."

Mr. Wolfensohn said the decision to step up the fight against AIDS was a example of the bank's commitment to fight poverty in all its manifestations -- and of what he called the protesters' ignorance of World Bank initiatives. The bank is well known for financing large-scale dams, roads and power plants in third-world nations, projects that critics say often do not do much to help the poor. Mr. Wolfensohn said the bank these days was much more focused on small-scale poverty-relief initiatives and efforts to combat diseases.

After reviewing the bank's policies today, the so-called Development Committee, controlled by the bank's member nations, made AIDS lending the bank's top priority. The bank has made loans to AIDS-related projects for a dozen years, but it has recently become more active in programs in Africa, India, Eastern Europe and several other areas.

The bank does not administer health programs itself. But Mr. Wolfensohn said it was prepared to help countries impacted by AIDS to develop prevention and treatment programs.

"We will make sure that no sensible program is stopped for lack of money," he said. "We will either provide it ourselves or we will help them raise it."

The finance minister of India, Yashwant Sinha, strongly supported the World Bank's efforts on AIDS. He suggested that they showed that the bank was more in touch with the interests of developing countries than protesters were. "Really nobody knows what they are protesting against," he said."They were here to prevent us from doing our work."

After Sunday's large, peaceful protests -- with some protesters garbed as sea turtles, others wearing shark fin hats, as in loan shark, and huge puppets like the "structural adjustment mechanism," a Rube Goldberg contraption with jaws that ate rain forests -- leaders of "affinity groups" gathered late Sunday night to reassess their tactics.

"We decided we needed to radically change our style today," said Terra Lawson, a 21-year old Yale senior.

They were to break into two groups, with the smaller band of about 400 going out early to try and cause trouble for the delegates being escorted by the police to the meeting. But in a series of scuffles, the police quickly stopped them with pepper spray, clubs and tear gas, arresting, they said, about 90 people.

A little before 8 a.m., a bus filled with delegates making their way to the World Bank crossed paths with about 100 demonstrators. Several protesters, black-clad anarchists among them, tried to sit in front of the bus. A squad of riot-equipped police officers jumped out of a van behind the delegate's bus, doused the protesters with pepper spray, dragged them away from the buses, and sped off with the delegates.

Chief Charles H. Ramsey was clutching a small red rose by the barricades this afternoon as a tense confrontation was defused. That face-off developed after the main body of 1,000 protesters managed to march at around 10:30 a.m., reaching a wide intersection near the George Washington University campus and the World Bank. Sirens wailed as the police in patrol cars, motorcycles and vans with black windows raced through the streets after the protesters.

"We're nonviolent -- how about you!" the demonstrators chanted.

Solid lines of police officers, cradling their nightsticks, blocked the streets leading toward the banker's meeting, bulging in their black riot gear. A loudspeaker among the demonstrators blared the Darth Vader theme from "Star Wars."

An anarchist climbed onto a traffic light and waved a black flag. At one point the police shot pepper spray at the protesters. The police blocked surrounding intersections several times, then pulled back. At one point, they pounced on a group of about 30 protesters, threw them to the ground, then let them go when they decided they were the wrong ones.

After several hours some of the protesters, including a young woman wearing what looked like a tree on her head, began negotiations by the barricades with Chief Ramsey and other ranking officers. Finally, an agreement was reached and relayed to the crowd. The protesters agreed to move back 10 feet, to sit down and be arrested in small groups. The police would take off their gas masks and make a gap in their barricades for the protesters to walk through before they were arrested.

"It was really tense when the police were pepper-spraying us," said Stephanie Finnernan, 15, holding a sunflower as she danced. "Then when we heard they were opening the gates, we were amazed. Then the arrests and cheers. Now people are dancing in the streets."