Irene Leon With the foreseeable script of show-casing unity among its 150 members, announcing some common conclusion, even though the central issue has been postponed for a Hong Kong II in Geneva 2006, the "6th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO" (December 13-18) drew to a close. And it did so in an atmosphere of disconcertment at the outcomes, among most of the participant members, and in a city disrupted by militarization, supposedly to "protect" the venue from the citizen voices of resistance, that merited far greater echo than the results of the conclave. But the official version says that the meeting did not fail this time, and obtained modest achievements; because the simple fact of not reediting the collapse of Cancun (2003) and not throwing more oil on the fire of doubts about the viability of the WTO strategy, were considered from the outset as potential successes. The announcements of eliminating the subsidies on agricultural exports by 2013; of releasing a quota (called quota free, duty free) for 97 products of the 50 poorer nations; and of suspending by 2008 the US subsidies on cotton exports, that were presented as the achievements of the meeting, are far from constituting the conclusion of the Doha Round. This is known as the development round, the prime motive for the meeting, but the development issue was postponed until April 2006. Doha established the agenda of: the promotion of sustainable development; the reduction of poverty and increase in jobs; improvements in international governability; and economic growth, especially of the developing countries. These goals, paradoxically, were to be achieved via the adoption of measures to improve trade and world-wide investment. According to the conclusions of the 6th Meeting, all these major pending issues will have to be dealt with over the next four months. For many of the countries described as poor, the concretion of this Round is indispensable if they are to be fully inserted not only into the WTO dynamics, but also in those of the market. Yet the main problem is in claiming that development can be obtained through that route. Even under that perspective, the disparity among member countries is a major stumbling block. Bargaining on a piece-meal basis between economies that are not in the least equivalent, as is the case of cotton production, that confronted the poorest countries of West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali), congregated in the Group of 4 -G4-, with the United States, demonstrates that trade freedom cannot evade structural and historical disparities. In this case, while the G-4 requested that the United States withdraw its subsidies to domestic cotton producers, whose dumping endangers the existence of smaller ones, they were only able to obtain that the cotton giant will suspend export subsidies by 2008. For that same reason, after more than 100 hours of discussions, the meeting reached a deadlock on the issue of tariffs on agricultural imports and the possibility of opening the markets of the major powers to produce from developing countries. The fact is that the ardor with which the US, UE and Japan protect their domestic agriculture from international competition, is a far cry from the ultimatum of total liberation that they want to impose on the others. These inconsistencies, known as negotiation strategies, make the possibility of consensus more remote and give way to imposition by force. Thus for example, while the Group of 20 developing countries - G-20 -, led by Brazil and India, began the meeting with the standpoint of not advancing on liberalization of services and trade of manufactured goods, if there was no progress on agriculture, the European Union, for its part, stated that it would not make concessions in agriculture if the developing countries did not do so in services and industrial goods. Clearly, they have forgotten that the Doha Round was supposed to give central attention precisely to the opportunity for developing countries to increase their opportunities to compete, among other things by overcoming poverty. Nonetheless, the G-20 accepted the final document under the pretext of unity, as did the Group of 90 (poor countries) and the Group of 33 (on special products in agriculture). The Brazilian foreign affairs minister, Celso Amorim, justified this change of position by the need to make commitments to unblock the process, and he was even more enthusiastic about the results on agriculture, an area of great preoccupation for the poor countries. "We not only have a date to end subsidies, but also an agreement on the subsidies on agricultural exports, most of which will have to be done by 2010", he said. On services, another controversial chapter, the tonic of the debates is illustrated by the discussions on the polemical "Annex C", one of the proposals on which was the possibility that a country can be forced to respond to trade orders of groups or countries, even though it does not want to or is not interested in the proposal. Venezuela headed the opposition to this absurdity, the Group of 90 watered it down in an alternative text, and Cuba, the Philippines and Venezuela stated their preoccupation with the controversial draft, whose further development is among the postponed matters. In summary, if there is anything to commend in the development of this meeting, it is the continuing alliance among countries of the South, which, although they do not express in-depth disagreement with the proposal of the WTO, at least allow for a certain geopolitical balance. On this matter, the Indian Minister of Trade, Kamal Nath, indicated that the greatest achievement of the developing countries is having maintained and demonstrated their unity. "We are not trying to create a North/South confrontation, but this unity between countries of the South is indispensable for the maintenance of multilateralism", he stated. Resistance from the grassroots For the Via Campesina Farmers' movement, which heads the resistance to the WTO, the main problem of Doha and the difficulties the WTO has run into, is due to having placed the market as the motor of development and leader of so-called globalization; or in other words, putting humanity at the service of capital, as VC coordinator, Indonesian Henry Saragih said. Therefore the resistance that social movements express is a fundamental matter. It has to do with what is not negotiable: persons, peoples, the environment, the planet and life, which cannot be put out to commercial auction, as is happening with the present proposal on agriculture. By pushing a mercantile vision of agriculture, the WTO endangers the very viability of the farmer way of life, transforming it into a mere industry of food production, without the peasantry. This explains the frontal opposition of this movement to the WTO, as expressed in Hong Kong and previously in Cancun, Seattle, and other locations where this world-wide entity tries to make decisions that alienate the possibilities of living in the countryside, as Honduran leader Rafael Alegria pointed out. He added that that this movement will not cease fighting to keep agriculture outside the WTO. As an alternative to the Ministerial Meeting, a number of social movements from around the world organized a significant agenda of resistance, that included activities of reflection, cultural events and mobilizations. The latter, as well as putting the ministerial meeting in check, whose members felt threatened by the massive nature of the protest, managed to present and disseminate their alternative proposals and the reasons for resistance. A wide range of pacific mobilizations, such as actions for raising awareness in places of large public affluence, thematic marches and cultural expressions, organized mainly by the farmer movement, won the favorable opinion of the local population, which was initially reticent and proud to be part of the so-called "capital of free trade". However, as the freedom defended for trade does not apply to people, repression against the pacific mobilizations soon appeared. The city was militarized and censorship imposed on divergent expression. On the last two days of the Ministerial Meeting, almost one thousand two hundred people were surrounded, arrested, jailed and left incommunicado, most of them members of the Via Campesina. Even then, until the last moment the mobilizations continued. Moreover, inside the police cordon, in the jail and from everywhere, the shout was heard in dozens of different languages: "Down, down the WTO" or "The WTO kills farmers". - Irene Leon, from Hong Kong, China.