Quebec Summit talks shelter from protest storm

By MARY DEJEVSKY

The heart of old Quebec is disfigured by a 4-metre-high metal fence. Traders are boarding up their shops, "just as a precaution." Anoraked protesters, weighed down by their knapsacks, are roaming the frozen, almost empty streets. And police are everywhere.

Quebec is girding itself for the latest battle in the war over globalisation, The People v Established Power.

This round, the Summit of the Americas, was joined in earnest yesterday, with the arrival of 34 heads of state who are confidently expected to place the weight of their combined offices behind plans for the biggest free trade area in the world - the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Only Cuba is not invited. Encouraged by the United States and Canada, the summiteers are likely to approve a formal "democracy" qualification for membership, and on democracy Cuba does not even reach first base.

Cuba, though, is not the immediate problem. It will keep a judicious distance from the weekend proceedings in Quebec, allowing the likes of Haiti, Peru and Argentina, to congratulate each other on the political progress they have made since the last Americas' summit in Santiago three years ago.

The arguments in Quebec will be twofold - those outside the hall that could turn violent on the model of the Seattle World Trade Organisation protests 18 months ago, and those inside the hall, which could still slow the seemingly inexorable march towards free trade.

The advance guard of protesters has been in Quebec since Monday, and the shadow of Seattle hangs as heavy over the French Canadian capital, as it did over the IMF meetings in Washington DC a year ago.

Canada, renowned south of the border for its general "niceness" and civility, has intensified controls at all ports of entry.

Airport now have dog patrols, and usually unmanned crossing points in the woods of north-western Maine are suddenly staffed.

Would-be protesters are said to be hiding in the Maine woods trying to find logging tracks to cross by, and a mass border crossing is planned from New York State across the bridge at Cornwall into Ontario to protest against what some alternative groups say are excessive restrictions on entry.

On Wednesday, Canadian police announced with great fanfare the arrest of six people - including two army reservists - on suspicion of conspiracy to commit violent crimes. Two were arrested in a car on the outskirts of Quebec, four others in Montreal.

Police displayed quantities of threatening equipment that they said was in possession of those arrested and said they had been under surveillance since late last year.

The timing of the arrests, just as the security operation was moving into top gear, indicates that the Canadian authorities were prepared, as their counterparts in Seattle were not, for anything that protest groups might throw at them.

The ugly fence reinforcing Quebec's age-old natural fortifications sends the same message.

It is a ring of steel designed to keep the summiteers safe and the summit on course.

The fence, however - already daubed with such trenchant graffiti as "Berlin 1989" and "Wall of Shame" - also contradicts the other message that the Canadian summit organisers have tried almost desperately to convey - that protest is a legitimate activity and should be heard.

To that end, the old port area of Quebec is outside the fence.

There, community halls and converted warehouses seethe with the political agitation of the alternative "People's Summit."

But elaborate plans by the Canadian authorities for a public dialogue between foreign ministers and protestors' representatives seemed to have foundered on Thursday, after protest groups said they would prefer a televised debate.

Canada's attempts to break down suspicion between the two groups by fostering inclusiveness and "transparency" of the official proceedings - the first session televised live, and the draft agreement released on the internet in advance - also seemed to be having limited success.

The summiteers will still have two key sessions in private, shut off behind thick chateau walls. Their deliberations there will largely determine how far and how quickly the American states will embrace the ambition of the United States for a free trade area that would demolish barriers to their trade with Latin America and - perhaps not coincidentally - make the US, with Canada, rivals with the European Union for the Latin American market.

In return, however, the US will be expected to make concessions on agricultural imports and - with other, richer countries - contribute to something akin to the EU's regional fund to speed development in poorer and smaller countries.

With agricultural trade still not totally unrestricted between the signatories of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, this - and the need for development money - could make even the best intentions for implementation by 2005 unrealistic.

Much is at stake at Quebec for Canada's prime minister, Jean Chretien, who has his country's dignity to uphold against the determination of some protesters to cause chaos and the reluctance of Quebec to host the summit at all.

But just as much, if not more, is at stake for the US President, George W. Bush.

Not yet 100 days in the job, with questions still raised about his lack of experience, especially on the international stage, Mr Bush has already incurred widespread international disapproval by publicly renouncing the Kyoto treaty on global warming as not in US interests. Not only is Kyoto dear to Canadian hearts, but it is also seen in less developed countries as a token of US willingness to be a global environmental player.

In an apparent effort to redress some of the damage from his Kyoto pronouncements, Mr Bush announced that the US would sign an international treaty banning a group of especially polluting chemicals.

Signing is risk-free in domestic political terms, as most of the substances are already banned in the US, and his announcement drew little response in Quebec where the US was still seen as the big bad polluter - at least outside the fence.

- INDEPENDENT