Mike Moore, global salesman

By AUDREY YOUNG

Mike Moore encountered a bit of grief from protesters in Pakistan on his way back to New Zealand for a break.

As Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, he is used to that sort of trouble.

He does not feel terribly threatened by it, he told the Herald.

"We get demonstrators in most places we go to. There's no big deal - 'Food for people, not for export,' whatever that means.

"I feel rather humble that I'm the first New Zealander to be burned in effigy in more than one continent.

"And it's a walk in the park compared to internal Labour politics."

Mr Moore, wit intact after a year in the job, has been resting in Matauri Bay, Northland, for a few days with his old friend Dover Samuels, sacked as Minister of Maori Affairs before the completion of a police investigation into a relationship 14 years ago with a teenager.

The two share an even stronger bond now because both can claim to have been knifed by Prime Minister Helen Clark - she deposed Mr Moore as Labour leader in 1993. However, Mr Moore is far too tactful to say so, nor does he feel it is appropriate to comment on the Samuels matter.

On the world stage, he straddles the extremes of the powerful and the poor, so it should be no surprise that he chooses to spend time with an outcast and downcast old friend before the Governor-General pins the insignia of the nation's highest award, the Order of New Zealand, to his chest at Government House on Friday.

It has been an exciting year for the irrepressible Mr Moore, but he welcomes a holiday from running the Geneva-based organisation that can argue for two hours on the word "possible" and three hours about how to consult on how it will consult.

"It's like having 136 members of a Parliament with no Speaker, no whips, just a general debate that goes on and on."

He has made visiting Parliaments and their influential committees part of his routine.

"We've got to make Parliament believe, in truth not just in PR, that they own this place."

He mentions with pride international political agencies that he is building up relations with, such as the Socialist International, Liberal International, Democratic Union - "relationships that we've never had before."

There is also his public relations war against the anti-free-trade left, which he counters with simple arguments.

"The contradiction of the left," he told a socialist youth meeting in Sweden last month, "is that on church on Sunday we give generously to flood victims in Bangladesh. Then on Monday we petition the Government to stop the Bangladeshis selling their garments in our country."

The left is no fan of Mr Moore.

Auckland University law lecturer and WTO monitor Jane Kelsey believes he is too dismissive of critics and accuses him of not entering into intellectual dialogue with them.

She says he is doing a good job on behalf of his critics because he is adding to the "unsustainability" of the WTO with messages the world does not want to hear.

"He would think he is doing a good job because he is out there unwaveringly remaining as an evangelist for free trade and its virtues and the WTO.

"People aren't buying that line any more."

The verdict of the pro-liberalisation lobby would differ.

As one Washington trade specialist put it, Mr Moore has played an exceptionally good hand after inheriting "a God-awful mess."

President Bill Clinton and his Administration, not the newly appointed Mr Moore, took most of the blame for the fiasco of the ministerial meeting in Seattle last December.

Seattle saw not only uncontrolled battles on the streets but intransigence and, effectively, sabotage in pursuit of domestic political agendas, making the summit a crash landing instead of the launch-pad for a new millennium round.

As Mr Moore said in a recent interview: "A lot of people here are saying Seattle was a blessing in disguise. Well I think it was bloody well disguised."

Protesters may have claimed credit for the failure of Seattle, he says, but "alas, we didn't need their help."

But he points out that ministerial meetings have flopped before. And sector negotiations in agriculture and services have got under way since then.

"The problem created for Mike going into Seattle," explains Washington trade lawyer Peter Watson "was the fact that it is a little like building an aeroplane."

"Which is to say when you try to develop a critical mass of agreement of people driving towards an agreement like you sought ... in Seattle, once that aeroplane falls out of the sky, you've got to rebuild the whole thing again - you cannot just pick up where you left off."

New Zealand-born Mr Watson is well qualified to assess Mr Moore's performance since Seattle from the pro-trade viewpoint.

He is a former chairman of the United States International Trade Commission and spent two years in the White House as trade lawyer acting for Governments and businesses involved daily with WTO issues.

He rates Mr Moore very highly in applying his talents to the new dynamics of the WTO, in which there is greater emphasis on rebuilding a consensus among the small and the poor, not just the powerful so-called quad of Japan, Canada, the United States and the European Union.

"I think he has served not only the WTO and international interests well, he has distinguished himself as a great New Zealand diplomat.

"I know there are people in New Zealand who will find that very hard to believe. There's a love-to-hate Mike Moore cadre in New Zealand, and it's pretty deep and it's pretty wide.

"But the fact of the matter is he has distinguished himself in being able to balance these many different competing qualities and equities and different country groups and weightings."

Mr Watson says Mr Moore's drive to make progress in trade liberalisation in developing countries is likely to be the legacy of his three-year term, before Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister, Supachai Panitchpakdi, assumes the helm.

"It is critical that you be able to wrap your arms around this disparate group of countries and bring them into an emerging consensus towards a commencement of a new round."

Mr Moore himself says he is "in danger" of enjoying the job, despite an exhausting travel schedule.

Ask him how he likes Geneva, and he says: "Look, I discovered it the other day. Seriously, I don't know the name of the street I'm in."

The visits he places greatest store by are the ones associated with the developing countries in Africa and the Caribbean and groupings such as the Organisation of African Unity and the developing G77.

He relates his strategy to his experience as an MP.

"You start off with the most neglected part of your electorate and build your strength up from that new centre you're creating."

Many poorer countries do not have the developed technical infrastructure at their borders or within their Governments to handle complex trade deals.

Some within the WTO have had problems coming to grips with the complexities of the seven-year Uruguay round, let alone embarking on a new one.

Mr Moore talks a lot about the Integrated Framework for helping poor countries joining the global economy.

It is his aim to deliver trade-related technical help to the United Nations' 48 least-developed countries.

He played a key role in a New York meeting last month of the six international agencies involved in the Integrated Framework, including the WTO, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

But the task is huge, and Mr Moore acknowledges that it is a slow and difficult process.

"The problems of Africa are just chilling. If you've got any tears left to shed, shed them. You go to countries where 25 per cent of the people are HIV."

For now, it is feet-up and chill-out time for Mr Moore.

Not even the rugby in Wellington on Saturday could drag him away from his beloved North, where he was born.

"I just want to sleep. I'm stuffed."

* This article was based on interviews last week and eight weeks ago.