www.upi.com From the International Desk Published 1/21/2003 1:17 PM

It's going to be quite a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in May -- and what could become the prototype of a new G-10 meeting of the real global powers. The confirmation from New Delhi that India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will combine his regular Indo-Russian annual summit with President Vladimir Putin with the celebration of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary party brings all the key actors of the world stage together. President George W. Bush will be there, along with China's new President Hu Jintao, France's Jacques Chirac, Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. So this assembles in Putin's hometown the usual G-7 crowd (which includes Italy and Canada) with Russia as the extra making up the G-8, and India and China for the G-10. India and China, Asia's two regional superpowers, have long grumbled at their exclusion from the white folk's club of the G-8. Interestingly, Vajpayee will be visiting Hu in Beijing this spring, just before the Russian summit, and Indian diplomats are weighing a joint Indo-Chinese proposal to make the G-10 meetings into a regular fixture.

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Meanwhile, India has other diplomatic avenues to explore, beyond its traditional leadership of that Cold War relic, the Non-Aligned Summit (next month in Malaysia). Iranian President Syed Mohammad Khatami visits Delhi this week to consolidate a new friendship that is based partly in India's energy needs, partly on joint interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and very much on their shared concern about the instability of their joint neighbor Pakistan. What is new about this week's agenda is the confidential defense cooperation talks. India's head of Naval Staff, Adm. Madhvendra Singh, is in Iran this week for high-level talks. Ship visits and other military cooperation -- including joint weapons development -- are expected soon.

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Even though it is stalling on U.S. basing requests, Turkey is making quiet preparations for war -- of another kind. An instant town of 24,000 tents to receive refugees in the event of a conflict is being established in Silopi in Sirnak province, several miles from the Iraqi border crossing at Habur. Turkey's Red Crescent humanitarian relief organization is also establishing its main warehouse Turkish Petroleum International Company's facilities in Silopi as it prepares for a tidal wave of up to 100,000 refugees. Turkish authorities have drawn up contingency plans to establish 13 camps for refugees on Iraqi territory and five more camps on Turkish territory. The effort is being coordinated by Emergency Rule Regional Gov. Gokhan Aydiner, Sirnak Gov. Huseyin Baskaya and Silopi's Unal Cakici. According to Aydiner, "the aim of all these works is humanitarian aid."

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As the 1,200 members of the French National Assembly and the German Bundestag gather in Paris for Wednesday's historic joint parliamentary session, commemorating 40 years of the Franco-German Treaty, a new call comes from Brussels for a full-fledged federation of the two countries. Two members of the EU's Commission, Germany's Guenter Verheugen (who looks after the EU's enlargement portfolio) and France's Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, have issued a joint open letter, published in the Berliner Zeitung and Liberation, calling for a common government to run the two countries' foreign, security and financial policies. Stressing that they do not want to create "an island without bridges to the European Union," they propose that other EU countries be invited to join them and create a "core Europe." What they don't say, but the implication seems clear enough, is that if pro-American poodles like Britain want to slow progress toward a full-fledged EU federal state, France and Germany are prepared to build a new institution from which American Trojan horses are excluded.

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This week's World Economic Forum at Davos is looking a bit thin on headliners. The organizers failed to get South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, and have to make do with a "special envoy" from his Millennium Democratic Party, Chung Dong-young. The stars confirmed so far are Secretary of State Colin Powell (U.N. complications permitting), Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mexico's President Vicente Fox and King Abdullah of Jordan. Americans glancing over the program may feel they are being got at. Featured events include a critical "foreign view" of the U.S. economy that will focus on its trade deficits and growing dependence on foreign investments, another on the doom of Detroit (or the prospects of a hydrogen-fueled economy), U.S productivity as miracle or myth, and a session on "What We Don't Know About al Qaida."

www.bday.co.za

  DAVOS - Heads of government and corporate chiefs meet in Davos from Thursday to mull over geopolitical uncertainties and a crisis of confidence in the global economy, while thousands of their critics are expected to converge in Brazil.

Brazil's new president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula, will provide the only visible link between the 33rd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss Alpine resort and the World Social Forum in his homeland.

Lula, a former trade unionist, will head for Switzerland after he takes part in the Brazilian event alongside an expected 100,000 critics of globalisation.

Both meetings are taking place against the backdrop of the threat of a war in Iraq, with the chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix due to present his first report on Baghdad's compliance to the UN Security Council on January 27.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell will take part in the WEF on January 26.

Yet the climate differs substantially on either side of the equator.

The World Social Forum appears to have reached cruising speed, with its organisers moving away from a purely oppositional, anti-globalisation stance to speak of "putting change into action".

Porto Alegre, a largely public event, has grown and gained confidence two years after it was set up as an alternative to the elite, clubbish gathering in Davos.

More than 100,000 people from 157 countries are expected in the Brazilian port city, along with 5,000 organisations under the banner "Another world is possible".

Meanwhile, Davos's slogan, "Building Trust" betrays declining confidence.

The 2,150 mainly corporate and political guests from 99 countries - including 29 heads of state or government, 81 ministers - will gather behind a series of fences and checkpoints.

Media reports suggest that this year, the WEF has had trouble convincing important figures to turn up.

The event will be dominated by the Americas, with a large US contingent including Powell, Attorney-General John Ashcroft and chief executives of major US corporations.

They will be joined by several Latin American heads of state including Lula, Argentinian President Eduardo Duhalde, and Colombia President Alvaro Uribe Velez.

Security has been boosted and for the first time the Swiss authorities are warning that unauthorised aircraft entering a no-fly zone around the resort could be shot down.

The Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve described the 14 million Swiss franc ($10.2-million) spent on security as "the largest security operation ever set up in peacetime in Switzerland".

The WEF has also been stirred by question marks hanging over the business world, following US corporate scandals over the past year, as well as the possible economic impact of a war in Iraq.

Three decades after he founded the WEF, Klaus Schwab, president of the meeting, said he could not remember the meeting taking place "at such a special moment in time, of such complexity, fragility and vulnerability in the global situation".

He has also played down the role of the Davos forum, saying it is "not a decision-making body, not a place to negotiate".

A few Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) have been invited while more social themes will be debated at an "Open Forum" unusually open to the public.

This year's meeting will also go without its traditional gala evening. However, most NGOs will hold their debates at the alternative "Public Eye on Davos" gathering just outside the conference centre.

The Swiss authorities have allowed a demonstration by anti-globalisation activists to take place in the resort on Saturday. 

AFP

www.timesofmalta.com World Economic Forum - January 23-28 Andrea Friedli in Zurich, Reuters

Switzerland is mounting its biggest security operation for the world's business and political elite who gather this week at the Davos ski resort, with any plane straying overhead risking being shot down.

Hundreds of police and around 300 soldiers will be deployed in and around the chic mountain city for the January 23-28 World Economic Forum (WEF). Troops in neighbouring Germany are on standby in case of need, police sources said.

The aim is not only to protect international figures such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from extremist attack, the resort is also bracing for anti-globalisation or anti-war protests.

Unlike in 2001 - last year the event switched to New York as a mark of respect after the September 2001 suicide plane hijackings - demonstrations will be allowed in Davos, Europe's highest city at 1,500 metres.

The WEF meeting comes amid mounting international tension over Iraq, with United Nations weapon inspectors due to report to the Security Council on January 27 on their search for Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Washington, which has threatened war if Iraq does not come clean over its alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, says the report could be crucial.

Last Sunday, police in Davos found a small explosive device containing a firecracker and an automatic fuse near the Davos Congress Centre where the WEF meeting will be held.

WEF organisers, police and the Swiss government played down the threat from violent political extremists bent on striking a high-profile blow.

"The fact that personalities like the US Attorney General and others are participating should show you that this question has been taken care of," WEF founder Klaus Schwab told journalists.

The security measures will cost the Swiss authorities some $10 million, around $5,000 for each of the 2,000 leaders of finance, business and politics due to attend.

The resort is not on the route of commercial airlines and any light plane seeking to overfly it could be shot down by Swiss fighters if it ignores orders to change course, Swiss government officials said.

The several thousand protesters expected in Davos for Saturday's main demonstration will have to run a gauntlet of police checks.

"We are expecting large difficulties (in getting to Davos). At the moment we have permission to demonstrate, but no permission to allow demonstrators to get to Davos," Walter Angst from the Oltner Buendnis protest movement told Reuters.

Police are setting up checkpoints in the narrow valley that leads to Davos and travellers will be searched for weapons or potentially dangerous objects.

At the main checkpoint midway up the valley, train and bus passengers must disembark and enter a fenced area where they will be searched before being allowed to board a train to Davos.

The government came in for heavy criticism from both civil rights groups and the media for banning protests in Davos in 2001 when riots erupted in other Swiss cities, particularly Zurich.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.22.03, 10:51 AM ET

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Brazil's state-run oil giant Petrobras <PETR4.SA>(nyse: PBR - news - people) said on Wednesday that economist Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo had been named the company's new financial director.

In a statement, Petrobras said Gabrielli will be officially nominated for the post at a board meeting on Jan. 31, and that he would start work on Feb. 1.

Gabrielli will replace Joao Pinheiro Nogueira Batista, who has said he is stepping down for personal reasons.

Gabrielli holds a doctorate in economics from Boston University and has worked as a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He also has an extensive background in Brazilian academia, mainly in the economics department at the Federal University of Bahia, where he did his undergraduate work.

Gabrielli will report to Petrobras' recently installed president, Jose Eduardo Dutra, who was appointed earlier this month by Brazil's new left-leaning president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Some investors have been concerned that under the Lula administration Petrobras might be turned from a corporation successfully competing with world oil majors abroad into a source of financing for pet political projects, losing its newly won pricing independence and high profits.

Dutra, however, has said the company would maintain its investment plans and continue to put profits high on the agenda, helping to ease investors' fears of late.

Petrobras shares were down 3.31 percent at 48.20 reais in early-afternoon trading, underperforming the broader market, which was down 1.5 percent.

www.latintrade.com 01/22/2003 - Source: Latin American Newsletters

The new Brazilian transport minister Anderson Adauto has been accused of involvement in an embezzlement scandal. Adauto belongs to the Partido Liberal (PL), the party of Brazil's Vice-President.

Adauto is accused of being part of a group that embezzled R$4m (US$1.2m) from the municipal government of Itaruma in Minas Gerais. He was summonsed by President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva today to explain himself. Yet, even before the meeting, Lula's spokesman, André Singer, told reporters that Adauto would not be sacked or be forced to resign, a message that officials confirmed last night.

Adauto, who became transport minister at the beginning of the month, says the allegations come from those angry at his recent decision to spend R$5bn (US$1.5bn) on roadbuilding projects and call in the army to audit and manage the programme.

The PL is a small centre-right party with strong links to the evangelical movement. Lula, who belongs to the leftwing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), tried to form an alliance with the PL in order to increase his appeal to the middle class.