www.ipsnews.net Adalberto Marcondes

The World Social Forum (WSF) that ended Tuesday in this southern Brazilian city sent out a strong message against war, injustice, and social inequality.

Over the past six days, more than 100,000 people from around the globe, mostly young, debated, shared their problems, pointed out solutions, and managed to subvert the global debate agenda.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 28 (IPS) - The World Social Forum (WSF) that ended Tuesday in this southern Brazilian city sent out a strong message against war, injustice, and social inequality.

Over the past six days, more than 100,000 people from around the globe, mostly young, debated, shared their problems, pointed out solutions, and managed to subvert the global debate agenda.

''Our greatest victory this year is that the world has heard us out,'' said Brazilian activist Cándido Grzybowski, a member of the WSF organising committee.

''The Forum is an arena for proposals from the whole of civil society, and a lot of what has been discussed in 2002 is part of'' the government plan of Brazil's new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he added.

The third edition of the WSF, which opened on Jan 23, clearly made the World Economic Forum (WEF) -- which for over three decades has met annually in Davos, Switzerland to chart international economic strategy -- look southwards.

That change of attitude in the industrialised North was influenced by the bridge built between this great ''Tower of Babel'' and the formal meeting halls of Davos by Lula, one of the original promoters of the WSF as the head of Brazil's leftist Workers' Party (PT).

''We must tear down the walls that separate those who have everything from those who have nothing,'' Lula said Sunday in Davos, addressing the powerful business and government leaders meeting in the Swiss resort town.

In a huge rally held just hours before he headed from Porto Alegre to Davos, Lula addressed the criticism drawn by his decision to attend the WEF, explaining that his participation would give a voice to the proposals of the WSF, which emerged as a counterpoint to the annual meeting of the world's rich and powerful in Switzerland. Besides the protests against inequality and justice, Porto Alegre raised its voice loudly in favour of peace. Former Portuguese president Mario Soares, for instance, urged all countries to strengthen the United Nations, as the only way to preserve peace. Soares was one of the leaders who presented, in Porto Alegre, the ''Manifesto for Peace and Against War'', signed by a long list of personalities and political leaders from across the ideological spectrum in Portugal.

''It is unacceptable that the United States has abandoned the multilateralism that was built during the last decades in favour of retrograde, imperialist actions. But one must not mistake the American people for the government that rules the country,'' he said.

Ignacio Ramonet, another WSF organiser, said the forum's main message to the world this year was ''No to War!'' -- a reference to the U.S. and British preparations for a military strike against Iraq. This year's edition of the WSF has also shown that the South is thinking about itself, about its own models. Throughout the demonstrations, the message became increasingly clear that corruption, inequality and social injustice would not be tolerated by civil society.

The social and political activists said good-bye to Porto Alegre Tuesday as they headed home with precise objectives to be met before the fourth annual global gathering of social movements, to take place next year in India.

Ramonet said the results of this year's forum will materialise during the coming months, when everything that has been discussed will be compiled and organised in documents and proposals that will be sent to governments, non-governmental organisations, political parties and trade unions.

The documents and proposals will contain the message of hope generated in the past six days by around 100,000 people in debates, seminars and panels, who concluded that ''another world is indeed possible,'' the WSF slogan.

Hundreds of classrooms at the Catholic University, the Gigantinho stadium, port warehouses, and many other spaces in the city of Porto Alegre were set aside this year for talk against hunger, war, gender discrimination, and in favour of minorities and justice, as well as for protests and demonstrations of all kinds.

The presence of almost 4,000 journalists from across the globe sent the forum's messages around the world, and even attracted Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, keen on explaining the confusion and chaos that have hit his highly polarised country, even though he was not officially invited to the WSF. (END)

www.alertnet.org NEWSDESK   28 Jan 2003 19:31

(Adds details, background) By Mark Egan

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday gave Brazil's economic performance a resounding endorsement, saying there was every reason for optimism as long as the nation stayed the pace of economic reforms.

In a statement released on the lender's web site after IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler met Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in Paris, the fund said it was encouraged by recent strengthening in market confidence toward Brazil and that its economy was on track for recovery.

"We were encouraged by the general improvements in market confidence toward Brazil over recent months, driven by a wider appreciation that sound economic policies will be maintained in Brazil," IMF chief Koehler said.

"Of course, the global environment remains challenging and we agreed, therefore, to keep in close touch, as the IMF continues to support Brazil's efforts to emerge from its temporary difficulties," Koehler said.

Koehler said Brazil's economic program, backed by a $30.7 billion IMF loan, "is on track," saying: "There is every reason for optimism that a basis for sustained economic growth and social progress is being established in Brazil."

Koehler said his discussions with Lula and Finance Minister Antonio Palocci encompassed the global market environment, developments in Latin America and the situation in Brazil. The IMF chief said he was impressed by Lula's vision for speeding up economic activity in Brazil while improving social equity.

Koehler said the new Brazilian president told him that reforms aimed at bolstering Brazil's continuing recovery would be carried out in the coming weeks and months.

"Maintaining fiscal sustainability by progressive structural reforms will lie at the heart of macroeconomic policy," Koehler said.

In December, the IMF gave Brazil's economy a positive bill of health, freeing up a $3.1 billion payment under the nation's massive loan, inked in September of last year.

That loan was aimed squarely at assuaging market jitters, which hammered the nation's currency ahead of November's presidential elections. Before the election, markets had feared that if leftist Lula was elected, he might abandon IMF reforms and undermine the Latin American economy by running up government spending on social programs.

With that in mind, the IMF structured its loan to make the bulk of the payments available only if Lula stayed the course of reforms during 2003.

The latest IMF endorsement came as a new poll released in Brazil showed that 78.4 percent of Brazilians expect the new government to do a good job.

Lula, a one-time radical union boss who became Brazil's first working-class president, was elected in a landslide on Oct. 27, winning the most votes ever in Brazilian history thanks to his promises to create jobs and wipe out hunger.

www.thenation.com Posted January 28, 2003 January 28 by Marc Cooper Porto Alegre, Brazil Monday Night

Early tomorrow morning, organizers of this, the third annual World Social Forum, will formally close out the weeklong event to report their conclusions to the hundreds of international reporters gathered here. But this is merely a formality.

Having drawn more than 100,000 participants to scores of panel discussions and more than 1,500 seminars, debates and workshops on globalization and its effects, there will be no firm conclusions, resolutions or marching orders. Merely some consensual ideas and suggestions for how what is known as the global justice movement should move forward. More about those in a moment.

Looking back over this past handful of days, there were several emotional peaks that delegates and participants are bound to remember: Brazil's newly inaugurated socialist President Luiz Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva speaking softly to a local crowd of scores of thousands, his voice catching in emotion as he spoke of hungry children, and then--two days later--again watching Lula via satellite, as he passionately pleaded the plight of the global South to the assembled elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And then there was today's electrifying peace rally in a local indoor stadium packed to the rafters with thousands and awash in flags and banners, brought cheering and chanting to its feet by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy and MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. The stadium crowd then poured into the streets for a spirited and colorful march against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas--a joyous, noisy caravan, equal parts political demonstration and Brazilian street carnival.

Indeed, this session of the World Social Forum saw the definitive merger of the global justice and peace movements--an inevitability given the intense Bush Administration press for war in Iraq. Opposition to the war was beyond any debate here. But there are more than a few strategists and activists concerned that the war itself, if and when it comes, and the energies invested in opposing it, will distract from the fight around the more underlying issues of corporate globalization.

On that issue of distraction: There were several sideshows occurring this week that competed for the concentration of the assembled. The most clamorous was that of embattled Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez, who flew unexpectedly into town, clearly hoping to use the forum as a high-profile venue to argue his own case (the Venezuelan opposition is now about to enter the third month of a costly economic strike against him). But forum organizers stuck to their principle of not allowing any head of state to formally participate (even President Lula's appearance took place outside the formal structures of the WSF), and Ch?vez was kept out.

The former military officer turned populist president then staged his own show in a different part of town, and 200 journalists who turned up for his press conference were put through an arduous four-hour process of fighting their way in, only to eventually have the long-winded Ch?vez answer a grand total of five softball questions from pre-selected journalists during the hour he appeared. More disconcerting, a group of forum activists who agreed to participate the next day in what was billed as a daylong "independent" inquiry into the activities of the private and very anti-Chavista Venezuelan TV stations were later aghast to learn that one of the organizers of the hearing was himself a paid press "adviser" to the controversial Venezuelan president.

But despite these detours, much good work was accomplished. Marathon closed-door meetings of key activists from around the world hammered out detailed plans for action over the coming months. Networking and alliances were undertaken on just about every possible point on the international social justice agenda, from labor and human rights to the fight against war and militarization, against genetically modified foods and the privatization of water and other services, to defense of the environment.

But the two top issues at the core of the movement will be to stop the planned expansion of authority of the World Trade Organization, as well as the agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Both these issues will converge this fall with the next WTO ministerial meeting planned for Cancun in September and the FTAA ministerial meeting in Miami two months later. With those targets in their sights, a multinational coalition of NGOs and social movements will be ramping up coordinated campaigns, at once lobbying different national governments on these issues as well as trying to produce as much "street heat" as possible--so look for two more momentous, Seattle-like battles later this year in Cancun and Miami.

All of this year's work at the World Social Forum seemed to float on the still-present euphoria of Lula's landslide election--an event that the prominent Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto called "the first and most important ascendancy of the international left since the fall of the Berlin wall." Enhancing that elation was the undeniable sense that the upbeat tone of this year's forum was a sharp contrast to the gloomy atmosphere that pervaded the pro-corporate Davos conference held simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic. "We can't turn back the wheel of history," said Lula's chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, referring to globalization. "But maybe we can turn it around."

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.28.03, 12:47 PM ET By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa

NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Emerging market debt traded mostly flat on Tuesday as investors awaited concrete news about a possible war in Iraq and scanned global financial markets for a sense of direction.

After United Nations inspectors on Monday delivered a scolding but inconclusive report on their hunt for weapons of mass destruction within Iraq's borders, emerging markets were holding tight ahead of U.S. President George W. Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

J.P. Morgan's benchmark Emerging Markets Bond Index-Plus narrowed a meager 9 basis points to 742 over comparable safe-haven U.S. Treasuries. The spreads over comparable U.S. Treasuries are the premium investors demand to compensate for risk.

Fears that a conflict would dampen investors' appetite for risk and drive them out of emerging markets continues to stand as the backdrop for emerging debt trading, a scenario unlikely to change until there is a clear resolution to the standoff in Iraq.

"The external factors to emerging markets are what's on investors' minds at the moment," said Paul Masco, head of emerging market trading at Salomon Smith Barney.

Sinking U.S. stock markets, which have been flirting with three-month lows, pressure on a wobbly U.S. dollar and fears about Iraq have all been weighing on the market, Masco said.

In Brazil, where new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is riding out his swift transition from Wall Street menace to market darling, benchmark C bonds <BRAZILC=RR> gained 0.5 points to 67.25 bid.

Investors continue to tip their hats to the policy reform efforts of the Workers Party economic team, but the geopolitical uncertainty surrounding Iraq has doused Brazil's valiant market comeback with cold water.

"The local fundamentals are quite positive, the measures taken so far are solid, the government is headed in the right direction," said Ricardo Amorim, head of Latin American debt strategy at IDEAglobal.

After posting strong gains in the first part of January, Brazil bonds are now up a paltry 0.9 percent on the year.

"The problem is that the future of Brazilian markets is going to depend as much on the internal fundamentals as on the possibility of war, and on that front, things aren't looking good," added Amorim.

Amorim said the growing likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iraq would undoubtedly dampen investors' appetite for risk and dull the allure of emerging markets. Meanwhile, in strife-torn Venezuela, where an opposition strike aimed at forcing President Hugo Chavez to resign entered its 58th day, officials were considering a fixed exchange rate as an attempt to stem rising capital flight.

The strike has crippled energy production in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, but Chavez claims the opposition's resolve is starting to crack.

A shift in monetary policy would help preserve Venezuela's reserves and allow the country to repay its foreign debt. But analysts cautioned that fixed exchange rates had led a number of Latin American nations -- including crestfallen Argentina -- astray.

In other emerging market news, investors were awaiting a planned Peruvian bond deal of around $1 billion. The bond, which sources close to Peru's Economy Ministry said could carry a 12-year to 15-year maturity, may sell as soon as this week, analysts said.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.28.03, 12:26 PM ET

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Outgoing New York Fed President William McDonough on Tuesday gave high marks to the new leaders of Brazil's economic team.

McDonough advised banks to remain in Brazil, saying he was encouraged by statements made by Brazil's new Finance Minister Antonio Palocci and central bank head Henrique Meirelles.

"The new finance minister and central bank governor are saying all the right things and are getting remarkable support from the democratically-elected president," McDonough said in a speech to the Bankers' Association for Finance and Trade.

A new government headed by a left-leaning former union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took over on Jan. 1.

The political views of Brazil's new leadership raised fears among investors that sent the real currency tumbling last year. However, investors have recently cheered a more moderate stance by Lula's top economic advisors.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Meirelles said, according to Brazilian media reports, that the government would target a surplus above 4 percent of GDP, up from the 3.75 percent goal agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

The comments were broadly welcomed by the investor community, which had worried Brazil may not produce a surplus high enough to finance the country's hefty debt-to-GDP ratio, now close to 60 percent.

On Thursday, Brazil's economic team also secured the endorsement of a top U.S. Treasury official.

"The focus on fiscal policy is very welcome," said John Taylor, the Treasury's under secretary for international affairs. "The signs are good."