Prague gets ready for trouble at finance summit

When finance ministers from the world's leading industrialised countries meet in Prague on Sunday, they will be greeted by a mock funeral procession through the picturesque city. Organised by Jubilee 2000, a coalition of groups demanding debt relief for the world's poorest countries, the procession will mourn the millions of children who die each year in countries crippled by debt repayments.

As 11,000 police officers were called up this week to deal with demonstrations that are expected to climax next Tuesday, many Czechs are wishing they had never heard of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Group of Seven (G7). Most of Prague's schools are shutting down as thousands of children are being evacuated from the city, and many businesses will close until the 18,000 bankers, politicians, officials and journalists have gone home.

Even Prague's prostitutes, who might otherwise view the IMF delegates as a lucrative target group, are getting nervous about the prospect of violent clashes between the police and up to 20,000 anti-globalisation protesters expected in the city by next week. Some brothels are taking on extra bouncers but many sex workers are reported to be leaving the city or just staying at home to avoid getting caught up in the protests.

When the IMF announced four years ago that Prague would host this year's meeting, Czech officials felt proud that their country was chosen as the first post-communist state to stage the event.

"Hosting the meeting is a huge bonus for Prague because the IMF and the World Bank do not usually place these meetings in places which are not stable and which are not considered economically advanced. If the security organs manage to steer the situation without any great violence, it will undoubtedly have a positive impact for the Czech Republic," said Mr Jiri Pehe, one of Prague's leading political analysts.

Prague's problem is that, since the protest in Seattle last December, IMF meetings have become the favoured target for the world's fastest-growing political movement - the international campaign against global capital.

The anti-globalisation movement is a vast coalition of about 1,500 groups that range from trade unions and Christian charities to environmentalists, animal rights campaigners and radical leftists. They regard the IMF and the World Bank as secretive, unaccountable organisations that promote capitalism throughout the world without giving due consideration to the effects of the market system on the poor.

"People would not be on the streets and people would not be demonstrating in this way if these institutions were truly democratic and if they represented the people on whom their policies are actually practised. It's the fact that poverty is so endemic and that people are denied basic services that forces people out on to the streets in protest," said Mr Michael O'Brien, Campaigns and Advocacy Executive for Oxfam Ireland, one of a number of Irish groups that will be in Prague next week.

The IMF has acknowledged that debt relief must be speeded up if any inroads are to be made into combating poverty in the developing world. Viewed as a group, the heavily indebted countries suffer from some of the most pervasive levels of poverty in the world, with more than half the population living on less than a dollar a day and one child in six dying before the age of five.

The IMF and the World Bank last year reformed their Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, claiming that debt relief to 32 countries would effectively double. But an analysis published by Oxfam this week claims that, although the new rules will ease the burden on some countries, it will actually increase it for others.

In Senegal, for example, debt service repayments will double to $171 million (#202 million) per year and in Zambia they will increase by one-third, according to the report. Zambia, one of the countries most badly affected by the AIDS epidemic, spends 40 per cent of its annual budget servicing foreign debt.

The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, met anti-poverty activists this week in advance of his address to the IMF conference next Wednesday, and Mr O'Brien is hoping that the Minister will join calls for a fresh reform of the debt-relief programme.

"We would like Ireland to clearly support action against poverty as a crucial condition for debt cancellation rather than the current emphasis on structural adjustment and on meeting certain macro-economic targets. We want poverty to be centre-stage in any new Heavily-Indebted Poor Coutries scheme. I think it's a real opportunity for Mr McCreevy to come up with a strong initiative on debt cancellation for the poorest countries," he said.

The new IMF president, Mr Horst Kohler, has said that the organisation is willing to move away from the micro-management of economies of countries that receive IMF loans, and the World Bank has accepted that economic growth alone cannot reduce poverty.

It is unlikely, however, that the bankers and politicians will move far enough next week to satisfy the protesters who are pouring into Prague this weekend, and the Czech prime minister, Mr Milos Zeman, is clearly bracing himself for the worst.

"The government will certainly respect the right of demonstrators to express their views about these organisations, but it will not respect any right to violent protest actions," he said.