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Tens of thousands of protesters demonstrate in an anti-globalization and anti-war rally that opened the 3rd World Social Forum in Porto Alegre   DAVOS, Switzerland, January 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As global business leaders and politicians met for a second day at the World Economic Forum, demonstrators gathered on the Swiss ski resort of Davos on Friday, January 24, to demand changes to economic policies and action to halt the threat of war on Iraq.

They were joined by thousands of protesters around the world who marked the start the world's largest anti-globalization event in Porto Alegre, Brazil -- timed to protest the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

The World Social Forum, which seeks to act as a counter-weight to the meeting of the world's top business and economic leaders at a ski resort in Davos, Switzerland, is in its third year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Both events have focused attention on growing fears of war with Iraq and concerns of a possible global economic crisis and were accompanied by anti-globalization and anti-war rallies during which thousands of protestors took to the streets on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of activists from around the world were at the opening event at the Catholic University in this southern Brazilian city, many waving anti-war banners.

Organizers said 100,000 activists from 157 countries would take part in the six-day gathering.

"We are here to say no to war, yes to peace, (and) 100 percent cancellation of the debt of poor countries," said Njoki Njoroge Njehu of Kenya, one of the opening speakers, from the 50 Years is Enough network.

The inaugural event focused on opposition to a possible Iraq conflict. The delegations from Iraq, as well as another representing U.S. peace activists, were warmly received.

Down with the imperialist war on Iraq Activists waved two large Iraqi flags and carried a photo-montage that compared U.S. President George W. Bush to Hitler with the caption "Down with the imperialist war on Iraq."

Groups representing Palestinians and pro-peace Israelis were also warmly received.

At the opening ceremony, organizers released a survey of 15,000 people in 15 countries that found six in 10 people believe social issues should take precedence over globalization and economic growth.

"The survey shows how in tune we are with the thoughts of society, with ordinary people, and it shows us that this is a movement we must believe in," said Candido Grzybowski, one of the poll's organizers.

The forum's star speaker will be Brazil's new left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. A former metal worker and union leader, Lula is scheduled to speak Friday.

Lula is then scheduled to fly to Switzerland and speak Sunday at the Davos economic forum. He said he would take the same message of the need to fight hunger and social inequality to both gatherings.

"Just as a new social contract is needed in Brazil, a global pact is needed to reduce the distance between rich countries and poor countries," Lula said in a statement.

"It's unacceptable that at the start of a new millennium, millions of human beings have nothing to eat."

Lula said his message to world economic and business leaders will be that "rich nations need to distribute the planet's wealth." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, currently facing a lengthy opposition-driven general strike, is scheduled to speak Sunday. Ministers from other major governments, including French Education Minister Luc Ferry, will also be in Porto Alegre.

About 30,000 people have set up a camp in the center of Porto Alegre where organic food is served and the sun and moon are the emblems on specially-minted currency to circulate for the duration of the forum.

Meanwhile scores of homeless Brazilians, supported by foreigners at the event, took over vacant land in downtown Porto Alegre, setting up banners and makeshift bamboo structures covered with plastic tarps.

Sixteen poor families under threat of being evicted called for the occupation, protest leader Cintra Edymar said.

Davos concentrates on Iraq and oil Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum began a second day in Davos on Friday with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft calling for greater international cooperation on counter-terrorism measures, AFP said.

The Forum was also due to focus on the impact on the global oil market of a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq and economic prospects for regions of the world.

Senior ministers from Iraq's neighbour Turkey and oil-rich Kazakstan, the head of oil cartel OPEC, and the bosses of Saudi oil giant Aramco and Russian oil firms Yukos and Tyumen were also due to meet on Friday.

There will be closed-door discussions in Davos on Friday on "the correlation between oil and conflict", the effect of the Iraqi crisis on oil prices and what the west can do to stabilise relations with the Islamic world.

Britain's Guardian newspaper on Thursday reported the U.S. State Department as saying oil was the "number one issue" and that the U.S. military had drawn up plans to protect Iraq's oilfields in the event of a war to prevent Iraqi President Saddam Hussein setting them ablaze.

Iraq, which has the second biggest known oil reserves in the world, could produce four times their current production of 1.5 million barrels a day with the right investment and control, experts told the paper.

Other meetings in Davos will address the economic prospects for the struggling U.S., the enlarging European Union, ailing Japan, booming China and an African continent that is still largely excluded from the global trading system.

Four African presidents are billed to attend and four Latin American heads of state, including Eduardo Duhalde of Argentina, which last week struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund to roll over 6.6 billion dollars (euros) of its debt to the IMF.

On the sidelines of the forum, members of the Palestinian Authority will respond to allegations of corruption by announcing reforms to the management of their public finances.

www.guardian.co.uk Friday January 24, 2003 4:00 PM

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) - If there's a common thread joining the tens of thousands of participants at the World Social Forum, it's globalization, and deep skepticism about what it can do for the good of mankind.

As activists taking part in the forum's opening march Thursday heaped criticism on the International Monetary Fund, Francisco Giuliano was hard-pressed to come up with anything he likes about unfettered U.S.-style capitalism and free trade.

Globalization has come only to decide how the rich will distribute for their own benefit the cake of our countries,'' Giuliano said. This is a globalization made by the haves, by the powerful only.''

Organizers have predicted a turnout of 100,000 activists in Porto Alegre for the six-day forum, held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Davos.

At least 2,000 police are on hand to keep order. Military police captain Joao Carlos Gomes said no major disturbances were expected.

With lectures from globalization critics and more than 1,700 seminars and workshops, the six-day forum seeks to change the perceived ills of capitalism, including foreign debt and unfair global trade that favor rich, industrialized nations and multinational corporations.

Some social forum participants are convinced that the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has a genuine chance at improving the lot of millions of impoverished Brazilians - and may even help the rest of South America's poor.

Silva, a former shoeshine boy who dropped out of school to help support his family, will address the social forum Friday.

The next day he will fly to Davos, where he reportedly will call for rich countries to join his fight to eliminate hunger affecting between 24 million to 44 million of Brazil's 175 million citizens.

During Thursday's opening march for the forum, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people demonstrated in Porto Alegre, many waving red flags and jumping into the air as a coarse voice repeated in Portuguese: ``No, no, no! Capitalism no! Long live socialism and the revolution!''

Brazilian theater student Camila Catario Fortes said anti-globalization sentiment is increasing because of ``negative outcomes of globalization across the world.''

Although the concept of opening all countries to free trade and allowing multinational corporations to operate without limits was good, the impact has not been for most of the world's citizens, she said.

It would have been different had it brought understanding among cultures, it would have been great,'' she said. But in practice, it hasn't happened.''

Annia Faas, a German writer from Hamburg said globalization was ``intrinsically wrong.''

``Differences among men are so great. You can barely understand your own neighbor, let alone the world.''

For Sergio Gomes, a metalworker from Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial largest city, globalization ``is the new name of colonization.''

It means that industrial countries keep the clean industries, like electronics, and force developing countries to work with industries polluting the environment,'' he said. They get the best, we are left the worst.''

news.bbc.co.uk Friday, 24 January, 2003, 16:02 GMT

By Adriano Campolina Soares Action Aid Brazil's campaign director reports from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Despite torrential rain, over 100,000 people turned up for the first day of the World Social Forum taking place from 23 - 28 January in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

Where else would a gay rights march be followed moments afterwards by a pro-Palestinian protest?

As soon as you arrive your senses are overloaded with colourful causes and campaigns all competing for attention.

Land for all, Rights for Women, No to war with Iraq.

It can seem like chaos, but that's what the Social Forum is all about.

It does not aim to promote one view but celebrate diversity.

Different planet Set up two years ago, the World Social Forum offers a radical alternative to the World Economic Forum, an elite meeting of international businessmen and politicians taking place in Davos, Switzerland at the same time.

Anti-American sentiment is running high The event has grown rapidly over the last two years from 20,000 attendees in 2001 to 100,000 today.

If the businessmen and political heavyweights from Davos were transported to Porto Alegre - slogan "another world is possible" - they really would believe they were on a different planet.

At the five-day meeting activists, campaigners and social movements from over 150 countries come together and share experiences.

It is here where alternatives to the free trade and neo-liberalist policies promoted at Davos are openly discussed and global alliances made.

Unique But with over 1,500 events spread out around the city there is too much choice and it becomes a little frustrating that there is no way to take everything in.

Adriano relishes the diversity of Porto Alegre

But as the biggest meeting of its kind, Porto Alegre is unique.

Where else would a gay rights march be followed moments afterwards by a pro-Palestinian protest?

Or landless people's movements from Latin American, Asia and Africa be able to sit round a table and compare notes?

Of course, conflict and disagreement are inevitable but that is half the fun.

Anti-war march The Social Forum offers everyone, from spiked-haired punks to farmers to university professors the opportunity to make their protest and revel in the joys democracy.

What's more, as it takes place in Latin America, activists from countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, who have actually suffered at the hands of corporate-driven globalisation, can have their say.

On the first day of the Forum the people took to the streets for an anti-war march.

As Brazilian government ministers walked with protesters there was an air of great hope spreading to campaigners from all across the globe.

After all, if Lula, a left wing unionist without a university degree can be elected President, then maybe another world really is possible.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.24.03, 9:01 AM ET

TOKYO/BAGHDAD - The United States said it had "very convincing evidence" Iraq possessed banned weapons as a trans-Atlantic rift widened over whether Baghdad should be disarmed by force. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, Washington's top arms control diplomat, said Iraq has maintained an extensive programme for the production of weapons of mass destruction, including long-range ballistic missiles banned since the 1991 Gulf War.

BAGHDAD - U.N. arms experts visited only one site on the Muslim day of rest, ahead of next week's crucial report to the Security Council on the results of their nearly eight-week search in Iraq.

SEOUL - South Korea said it would send a special envoy to the communist North to discuss the peninsula's nuclear crisis, an announcement that came just hours after the two sides agreed to work for a peaceful solution. President-elect Roh Moo-hyun issued his own overture, saying he planned to propose a summit with North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il.

DAVOS, Switzerland - A South Korean envoy urged North Korea to act fast to defuse a crisis over its nuclear programme, saying time was not on Pyongyang's side. Chung Dong-young, envoy of President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, also said he believed Pyongyang feared it would become the United States' next target after Iraq.

PARIS - Rival Ivory Coast factions united behind a peace plan to end four months of bloody civil war by setting up a coalition government and taking urgent steps to ease ethnic strife, delegates at closed-door talks said.

GAZA - Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians and unleashed air strikes after militants killed three soldiers in a surge of bloodshed four days before Israel's general election. The swift army response was likely to boost rightist Likud party Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Tuesday's balloting.

JERUSALEM - Visiting a shrine where the faithful believe prayers are answered, Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna made a pilgrimage to Judaism's Western Wall before an Israeli election he looks set to lose.

BARCELONA, Spain - Spanish police rounded up 19 suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in predawn raids against suspected al Qaeda cells in Barcelona and the surrounding region, officials said.

BERLIN - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the current rift between some European nations and the United States over the Iraq crisis underlined the need for the European Union to develop a common foreign policy.

MOSCOW - A European human rights envoy urged Russia to call off a constitutional referendum in Chechnya, saying it was doomed to fail while violence exploded daily and the views of ordinary Chechens were ignored.

TURIN, Italy - Gianni Agnelli, one of Italy's most powerful businessmen who turned the family car company Fiat into a global industrial giant, has died aged 81, his family said. He had been suffering from prostate cancer.

MELBOURNE - Australia braced for a second black weekend as officials said high winds and extreme heat, with temperatures forecast to exceed 40 degrees Celsius, could fan bushfires that have so far killed four people and razed up to 540 homes.

CARACAS, Venezuela - A six-nation group led by the United States and Brazil was ready to make a fresh bid to end Venezuela's political conflict, a day after a grenade blast in Caracas stoked fears of increasing violence in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

www.dw-world.de

USA insists despite French and German objections

American officials have further brushed aside objections to a U.S.-led war against Iraq as stated by Germany and France and echoed by Canada, Russia and China. After talks in Washington with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington would find other nations to support its military build-up. Visiting Turkey, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer reacted to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's remark about an "old Europe" by urging him to cool down his rhetoric. Fischer was in Istanbul, where foreign ministers from six Middle East Moslem nations told Iraq to cooperate more with UN weapons inspectors, and, in a message read by Turkish minister Yasar Yakis, urged the United States to consult within the UN Security Council. Canada's Foreign Minister Bill Graham urged the USA to "hold off", adding, however, that war might be justified if Iraq was found to be developing mass weapons. China said it uneasy about the "large scale" U.S. build-up in the Gulf.

German troops guard U.S. bases

Despite Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's objections to a U.S.-led war against Iraq, German troops have begun guarding some of the 95 U.S. military bases located within Germany. The German Defence Ministry said 300 Bundeswehr soldiers would conduct entry checks and patrols at bases initially in southern Germany. Eventually, 2,600 troops would be assigned. Berlin made its pledge to guard U.S. bases last November.

Preliminary peace deal for Ivory Coast

Factions at the Ivory Coast peace talks near Paris say they've reached a preliminary peace agreement to end Ivory Coast's four- month civil war and create a broad coalition government. A non-partisan prime minister would govern alongside President Laurent Gbagbo and arrange future elections and disarmaments. Rebel factions had previously demanded Gbagbo's immediate resignation. West African leaders are due in Paris this weekend to ratify the agreement. Officials of former colonial power France, which has 2,500 patrolling Ivory Coast's ceasefire line, said Paris wanted the deal to be monitored by the United Nations. On the issue of Ivorian identity, the text calls for an accelerated nationalisation process for many Ivorians entitled to citizenship but caught up in red tape. Ivory Coast's crisis left virtually split in half.

Rival economic forums preoccupied by Iraq

As the Davos Economic Forum enters its second day in Switzerland, subdued by fears over a war on Iraq, the rival World Social Forum has begun in Brazil with a large anti-war demonstration. Organisers said the march in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre was attended by 100,000 people from 153 nations. Some delegates carried banners highly critical of President George W. Bush and perceived "U.S. imperialism". The World Social Forum is to be addressed this Friday by Brazil's new leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose government plans a major land reform for peasants. Organisers, using the motto "another world is possible" reiterated criticisms that World Bank, WTO, and IMF were institutions that propagated quote "unrestrained capitalism". In Switzerland, the Davos forum is to be attended by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the head of OPEC and bosses of Saudi and Russian oil firms.

Unemployment soars worldwide

Unemployment worldwide reached a record 180 million late last year, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation, and it warns that even more people will become jobless in the future. The ILO says two years of economic slowdown, since 2001, had created 20 million more unemployed. Alone, the tourism branch had lost 10 million. Worst hit were women textile workers and youth seeking first jobs, and a region-by-region basis, the Caribbean and Latin America, with jobless rates of 10 percent. In the Middle East and and North Africa, rates were even higher, around 18 percent. On top of 180 million unemployed worldwide, the ILO says a further 550 million people earn less than one dollar a day, while another 1.6 million have only casual or illicit jobs. The ILO urges the creation of one billion new jobs over the next decade, warning that otherwise the UN won't reach its goal of halving severe poverty by 2015.

Top Korean aides to head north

South Korea has said the nation's outgoing president Kim Dae-jung and successor Roh Moo-hyun will send their top aides to North Korea next week for talks on crisis over the North's nuclear programme. The presidential office in Seoul the delegation would be led by Kim's special security and unification advisor, Lim Dong-Won. North Korea's official news agency confirmed the visit, agreed at inter-Korean talks held in Seoul. Japan, meanwhile, said its foreign minister Yoriko Kawakuchi and visiting U.S. arms control chief John Bolton had agreed that the crisis be resolved through diplomacy. Tensions rose in October when the USA alleged that North Korea was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme in breach of a 1994 agreement.

Fiat veteran Agnelli dies

The patriarch of the Italian carmaker Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 81 in Turin. He became chairman of Fiat in 1966 and turned what was then a tiny family company into a global corporation that grew to represent a 20th of Italy's economy. He was also a powerful voice in Italy's political right. Fiat's fortunes declined recently, with the lay-offs of 8,000 of its Italian staff as part of a restructuring. News of Agnelli's death today prompted a rise it Fiat's share price.

Clonaid says new clone baby born in Japan

The Clonaid group, run by the controversial Raelian sect, has said a third cloned baby was born to a Japanese couple, but as with its previous announcements, no proof was offered. At a press conference, Clonaid president Brigitte Boisselier said a baby boy had been cloned from cells from the couple's previous child who died in an accident. Clonaid has refused to give evidence for its claims to have produced three human clones. International scientists have expressed widespread skepticism.

Germany's Schuettler reaches Melbourne final

Finally sport and at the Melbourne tennis open, German outsider Rainer Schuettler has reached the men's final against Andre Agassi to be played on Saturday. Schuettler, ranked 31st seed, defeated American Andy Roddick in the semis and becomes only the second German, since Boris Becker, to reach a men's final in Melbourne's 98-year history. Meanwhile, the women's doubles final has been won - once again - by the Williams sisters of the USA. Serena and Venus Williams beat the Spanish- Argentinian duo of Virgina Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez. The Williams are opponents for Saturday's womens' singles final.