Clinton, Castro: Howdy but no shake

Fidel Castro was excluded from the invitation list for President Clinton's diplomatic reception for world leaders today but the Cuban leader managed to exchange a few words with the president, anyway.

Castro approached Clinton on Wednesday at the end of a luncheon of the United Nations Millennium Summit, a gathering of about 160 world leaders.

"They exchanged a few words. It was nothing substantive,'' said White House press secretary Joe Lockhart. National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley called it "a momentary exchange.''

"There was no handshake,'' Lockhart said.

Crowley said Castro was among a number of leaders who were not invited to a reception hosted by Clinton at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba and maintains economic sanctions against Castro's government.

"Not every participant in the Millennium Summit was invited,'' Crowley said. "There are countries around the world that we have serious concerns about such as their support for terrorism. And we didn't think it was appropriate to invite them to a reception hosted by the president of the United States.''

He said, for example, that officials from Iraq and Libya were not invited.

U.N. Study calls WTO a 'Nightmare

A United Nations-appointed study team calls the World Trade Organization a ''nightmare'' for developing countries and suggested the body should be brought under UN scrutiny.

In a report presented in August to the UN sub-commission on the protection of human rights and made available in September, the team also dismisses the WTO's so-called open trading rules as based on ''grossly unfair and even prejudiced'' assumptions.

The report also calls for a ''radical review of the whole system of trade liberalization'' and questions whether the system is geared toward shared benefits ''for rich and poor countries alike.''

There was no comment on the report from the WTO. Senior envoys from most member states - around 70 percent of them are from developing countries - and officials of the secretariat are on summer leave. But supporters of the open trading system say the dispute-settlement system, which adjudicates in trade arguments on the basis of the rules that all members have agreed to, has often found in favor of emerging economies in cases they have brought against big powers.

The document, a study of the effect of globalization on human rights, was written by two jurists - J. Oloka-Onyango of Uganda and Deepika Udagamaof Sri Lanka. If approved by the full sub-commission, which will meet in Geneva, it will be presented to the annual session of the overall UN Human Rights Commission when it holds its annual six-week session next March and April.

Caricom Responds To G7 Charges

Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have formed a group to formulate and implement strategies, which will present CARICOM's position in the face of continued attacks on the Region's offshore sector by the G7 through three agencies it has established.

The CARICOM group is called the Caribbean Association of Regulators of International Business (CARIB) and was scheduled to meet in late August.

Economic Adviser to the Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, Dr. Maurice Odle has informed that the new group will be instrumental in formulating the region's response to the charges being leveled against it by the G7 through its agencies.

The agencies include the Organisation of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and they are funded by the G7 grouping which includes the United States of America, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The issue of the OECD defined Harmful Tax Policy engaged the attention of CARICOM Heads of Government at their 21st Regular Meeting in St. Vincent and the Grenadines early July. They then decided to form a special committee to discuss the Region's response.

The Committee met in St. Kitts and Nevis in July and reported to the Bureau of Heads of Government which is comprised of the sitting Chairman, Sir James Mitchell, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the incoming Chairman, Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados, immediate past Chairman Dr. Denzil Douglas, Prime Minister, St. Kitts and Nevis and CARICOM Secretary-General, Mr. Edwin Carrington.

"The OECD along with the FSF and the FATF were created by the G7, and in recent times the G7 though the three organisations have orchestrated a series of unilateral activities that are inconsistent with international practices, and designed to impair the competitive capacity of Caribbean jurisprudence in the provision of a global financial service," notes a statement from Caricom.

In a report published on 26 June 2000, the OECD listed jurisdictions as tax havens because these countries have competitive tax regimes. The FATF identified countries in its 22 June 2000 report as "non competitive jurisdictions" in the prevention of money laundering, while the FSF in its 26 May 2000 Report, categorised Caribbean jurisdictions with Offshore Financial Centres based on a unilateral evaluation of the quality of supervision of these jurisdictions even as its Report found that "Offshore Financial activities are not inimical to global and financial stability."

The three reports were prepared by bodies in which the Caribbean has no representation, and were based on incomplete information on standards set unilaterally by these agencies.