Historic Prague braces for IMF meeting

Czech leaders want to prevent a repeat of chaotic protests in Seattle last year

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Reuters) -- Thousands of demonstrators are expected in Prague this week to try to disrupt a meeting of the world's top financiers.

Some 18,000 bankers, finance ministers and government officials will be struggling through barricades in what is one of Europe's most picturesque cities to try to debate reform of the International Monetary Fund and strategies for underpinning global growth.

Protesters want the focus to be on their anti-globalisation agenda, pleas for faster debt relief for poorer countries and workers' rights.

The showdown will dent Czech hopes that the first annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank to be held in post-communist Europe would spotlight the economic progress made here in the decade since communism ended in December 1989.

"We want to make the financiers' lives as difficult as possible in Prague and disrupt their meeting," said Viktor Piorecky, a spokesman for INPEG, an umbrella group organising many of the 200 planned demonstrations and gatherings.

"We don't consider the IMF and World Bank to be legitimate institutions and they don't have the right to have meetings somewhere and decide about other people's lives," he added.

Washington DC: Police used tear gas against protesters

With 11,000 police to protect delegates, the government has vowed to prevent a repetition of the chaos caused by 40,000 demonstrators at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last year.

"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," Prime Minister Milos Zeman said last week.

Anti-capitalist groups also tried to disrupt the IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington in April, but police kept them at bay with tear gas and pepper spray, arresting 1,300 people.

The expectation of violence means schools and businessses in Prague will close during the events, which start on Tuesday with the release of the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook.

The meeting will end on September 28. Demonstrations are likely to peak on September 23 when finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrialised countries meet and the following Tuesday, the formal opening of the IMF meeting.

Protesters are unlikely to be mollified by IMF forecasts that the world economy is growing at its fastest for a decade or by signs that the Washington-based global lender and the World Bank have heeded calls to reform the way they operate.

Germany's Horst Koehler, the recently appointed IMF head, has said it is willing to move away from much-criticised micro-management of the economies of countries receiving loans.

In the run-up to the Prague meeting, the World Bank, the world's premier development agency, accepted the view of many of its critics that economic growth alone could not reduce poverty.

Removing inequality, corruption and oppression also play a part in improving living standards, the bank said.

The meeting will also review IMF lending, amid pressure from rich countries to increase interest rates on loans and discourage countries from relying on the fund year after year.

The IMF will also seek to speed up a sluggish debt relief programme for poor states.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Up to 10,000 demonstrate in D.C. against world finance meetings
April 16, 2000
Washington police use force to control World Bank, IMF protests
April 16, 2000
Seattle and WTO each assess damages
December 4, 1999
President Clinton travels to a Seattle under siege
December 1, 1999

International Monetary Fund
World Bank
Czech Republic

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