(IPF) - feature

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual meetings, put on hold after last month's terrorist attacks, are to be held in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, from Nov 17-18.

The meetings were originally scheduled for Washington Sept 29-30 but were put off in the aftermath of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, which stands across the Potomac River from downtown Washington.

Activist groups had targetted the meetings for demonstrations but also called off most of their plans following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of economic globalisation and US military power.

Some of these groups are now scrambling to reorganise for the new talks.

"If the World Bank and IMF are getting back to business, I don't see why we shouldn't," says Soren Ambrose, senior policy analyst with the US 50 Years Is Enough network of groups.

Ambrose says it is too early to define the activist community's reaction but adds that his group is in touch with counterparts in Canada to work out a plan.

Alternative forum

"There may be protests but they may not be as large those originally planned for the Washington, DC meetings," he says. "There will also be an alternative forum to present our views and media activities."

Activists' demands, enumerated in advance of the aborted meetings in Washington, include a stop to structural adjustment programmes, debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries, and a halt to financing for environmentally destructive infrastructure projects. They also have called on the Bank and IMF to open the meetings and allow public participation in decision-making processes.

Ambrose says the groups would seek to avoid appearing insensitive to the tragic loss of lives on Sept 11 and the ensuing concern for public security but that this would not prevent them from expressing views about the negative influence of Bank and IMF policies in developing nations.

"If the Bank and the Fund are being open about their work after Sept 11 and the violence that's going on in Afghanistan, then we will be equally open about trying to stop them from causing further damage to poor nations," he says.

Merrell Tuck, the World Bank's deputy chief spokesperson, says the agencies have moved the talks to Ottawa because of security concerns and "out of deference'' to the United States.

The agenda for the talks, which traditionally draw finance and planning ministers and central bank governors from the lending institutions' shareholding nations, will include discussion of the global economic outlook in the light of the "tragic events of Sept 11 and their impact, in particular, on the poorest", the Bank says in a statement.

Discuss terrorist funding

Tuck adds the institutions would also talk about work to improve the stability of the international financial system and preparations for the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Financing for Development.

Bank and IMF officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the meetings also will discuss terrorist funding and steps governments can take to cut off terror groups' access to capital markets and banks.

The talks have been scaled down and will involve only the agencies' key policy-making committees: the Bank's development committee and Fund's international monetary and financial committee.

Thus, shareholding governments will be represented in much the same way as they are on the agencies' executive boards: larger shareholders like the United States and Britain will have their own representatives while smaller shareholders will be grouped in blocs and share representatives. The institutions have 183 shareholders but the committees consist of 24 members each.

The Bank says arrangements for the meetings are being made through consultations between Bank President James Wolfensohn, IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler, Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin, and the heads of the two committees: Indian Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha for the Development Committee and Gordon Brown, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the IMF Committee.

The meetings had been shrunk even before last month's terrorist attacks. First, the Bank and Fund agreed to Washington authorities' request to limit the talks to the downtown headquarters of the two lending institutions, abandoning traditional venues such as a historic hotel a few miles away. The move was driven by local fears that the meetings would be the scene of violent clashes between security forces and protestors like those at earlier international gatherings in Quebec City, Canada, and Genoa, Italy.

Then, citing the cost of providing security for the talks, the agencies agreed to trim the traditionally week-long meetings to two days.