In December 1999, a swarm of protest groups descended like angry bees on this American city. The mayhem that followed became known as 'the Battle of Seattle.'

'Kiro Seven Eyewitness News, a big morning here in Seattle with the WTO conference getting under way.

'We're going to continue to monitor the situation here as protestors continue to move through the city. Many demonstrations planned for today.'

Commentary (Comm): This is one of the biggest demonstrations on American soil since the Vietnam War. It has brought onto the streets a colourful and unlikely coalition of interests, from environmentalists to Burmese democracy campaigners, from car workers to rice farmers.

"And it's all about a big conference to decide the future of world trade. It may sound dull but, like the Vietnam War it is likely to prove the defining cause of a whole new generation.

"Earth Report went out on the streets and behind closed doors to witness what may prove to be a turning point in history, the start of a new international politics.

"The target of the demonstrations is the hitherto little-known - many say secretive - World Trade Organisation, which regulates international trade. In the WTO's short five years of existence, it's been accused of threatening the environment and making poor people poorer.

Barry Coates, World Development Movement: "The WTO is being used by the rich countries and the rich multinationals in order to, to basically block trade opportunities for the poorer countries, and it's not benefiting the environment, it's not benefiting workers."

Andrea Durbin, Friends of the Earth: "We want to make sure the WTO doesn't become a forum for deciding on legitimate environmental laws - and that that right should remain with governments and in international environmental agreements."

Comm: "What will be decided in this city over the next four days will affect everyone. Everywhere.

"For fifty years, politicians have been trying to break down barriers to trade, the lifeblood of the global economy. Many millions have prospered, but now there are growing fears that it's all going too far too fast because trade is being given precedence over people; profit over principle.

"Like the protests, the negotiations are covering a bewildering range of detailed issues including improved access to markets, reducing subsidies, labour standards and environmental precautions. But they're being held in secret.

Sean Sheehan, Washington DC: "It's not a democratic process at all. It's a dictatorship that can run the world. The people who are in power in the World Trade Organisation right now represent the business interests of large multi-national corporations primarily and are not there to represent the people of the world at all.

"No transparency. No democratic accountability. So we're trying to open that up."

Channel 7 News reporter to protestor: "Sir, we're live on the air, tell us who you are and why you're here."

Protestor: "I'm Darren from Australia and I'm here for my children who aren't born yet and don't know that if they were born now they'd be born into a society that doesn't really care about them."

Mark Vaile, Australian Trade Minister: "Oh, I think they understand what they want. I think that we, what I also understand, is that we're not clearly getting the message through to them.
Because on both labour standards and on, on the environment, there are very clear and demonstrable benefits that can flow from improved trade and trade liberalisation across the world that will flow to those sectors, particularly in the developing world."

Protestors chanting: "We don't have a voice, we don't have a seat; listen to the voices of the people on the street."

Dr M Kipkorir Aly Azad Rana, Kenyan Ambassador to WTO: "I was an anti-apartheid activist. I have participated in numerous demonstrations so I, I am not hostile to that. My country, Kenya, is a democratic country - we have demonstrations all the time. You see, what we feel is that it's a two-way educational process. Not only do the delegates need to be educated, as the demonstrators are demanding - even the demonstrators need to be educated about the issues."

Belgian delegates confront demonstrators...

Comm: "But this two-way education can be painful as generations clash. We're outside the convention centre as the young protestors block two Belgian delegates trying to enter the building."

Delegate 1: "I'm a lawyer for 23 years. I am a lawyer for 23 years. I have worked for people all over the world. All over the world. I work for political prisoners and what you are doing is pure fascism. Pure fascism."

Demonstrator: "As opposed to tear-gassing people and hitting them over the head."

Delegate 1: "When I was a student I was demonstrating against things like Vietnam War, against missiles, not against things like WTO. Try to understand what's going on."

Demonstrator 1: "So how come you no longer support democracy then?"

Delegate 1: "I was a lawyer for twenty years try to understand what's going on."

Demonstrator: "I understand. Big business is *** up the world."

Delegate 1: "Yes you are beeping up the world. What you."

Demonstrator: "I am big business and I'm in your way, aren't I?"

Delegate 2: "You have the right to demonstrate and we have the right to meet."

Demonstrator: "No, you have the right to do something about our lives."

Demonstrator: "And we have the right to free speech - for now."

Delegate 1: "In Europe this would be impossible."

Demonstrator: "No! There are Europeans here doing the same thing."

Comm: "The protests force the cancellation of the opening ceremony but delegates are now filtering into the conference centre. They weren't to know that the protests would continue to intensify and that their world was about to change irrevocably.

"The stakes are high for WTO's new Director-General, Mike Moore. He's determined that the show will go on."

Mike Moore: "This conference will be a success. The issues are far too important to be ignored."

Comm: "Three-thousand-five-hundred journalists from all over the world are here. They came to cover trade. But for many, the really big issues are environment and widening gulf between rich world and poor."

Clare Short: "Latest estimates suggest that the world's richest 225 people have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 per cent of the world's people."

Comm: "The WTO and rich countries say unfettered trade will automatically make the poor richer. But a United Nations study says while the rich will get hundreds of billions of dollars richer, Africa will become one point two billion dollars poorer every year.

"Mike Moore's promised poor countries a fair deal.

Reporter: "Mr Moore, do you believe in a level playing field here between developing countries and industrialised countries?"

Mike Moore: "We can only balance it a bit more. That's our ambition. That's our ambition."

Reporter: "Do you feel under siege by the protests outside?"

Mike Moore: "No! Not at all!"

Comm: "He's scheduled to hold a joint news conference with the head of the UN's environment agency which has brokered a whole portfolio of international agreements protecting the environment."

Mike Moore: "It is not on, under our rules, for one country to demand from another higher environmental standards than they demand of themselves."

Comm: "In international trade disputes the WTO has so far ruled in favour of trade over environment - every single time: but democratically?"

Mike Moore: "There is this contradiction which I keep reading that somehow we're undemocratic. Yet this is a ministerial conference, ministers responsible to governments, responsible to their public. I think that we're in pretty good shape, far better than you would think."

Comm: "Mike Moore says the World Trade Organisation and the UN Environment Programme will work hand in glove. But UNEP's Klaus Toepfer navigates with great care, choosing to strike a conciliatory tone with the demonstrators. "

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme: "We must try whatever is possible to link the concerns of those on the streets with the negotiations here, one, is with regard to the environment. We have to prove that this is not green protectionism but this is the precondition for economic development in the future."

Comm: "Future economic growth, he says, must be built on environmental sustainability which the WTO is accused of ignoring."

Remi Parmentier, Greenpeace: "The World Trade Organisation should not be able to interfere with the efforts of UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme. You take preventative action before damage starts to occur to the environment, you anticipate damage and you take action before the damage is taking place. The WTO would like us to take action only once the damage has started and this is really wrong."

Police: "You're not coming through you ****, you're not coming through."

Protestor: "How do I get to work then?"

Comm: "Out on the streets, battle lines are now clearly drawn. The protestors know their agenda: it is simply to derail the talks."

Police: "I have informed you that chemical irritants may be used."

Police: "This is your final warning. Please move to the north. Please move voluntarily."

Comm: "Within ten days Seattle's police chief would be forced to resign."

Protestor: "Tear gas."

Girl: "God damn, this is a world which should be equal and it's not equal right now."

Comm: "The tear gas and pepper spray - deployed by police as delegates try to break through - a portent of the poisoned atmosphere that is beginning to infect the trade talks themselves."

Protestors chanting: "We're non-violent, how about you."

Comm: "It's not looking good for the
WTO. A Seattle paper quotes a local professor. 'This bears the hallmarks,' he says, 'of the cause of a new generation' - just as the Vietnam War the Peace Movement and Anti-Apartheid were in decades gone by."

Protestor to another protestor: "Have you got any problems breathing? I need to know."

Protestor: "No, I can breathe."

Protestor: "I've got to get this off your skin, alright?"

Protestor: "This is going to hurt but it's going to feel better when it's done."

Comm: "Facing escalating chaos, the mayor of Seattle declares a civil emergency, imposes a curfew and calls in the National Guard."

'You're supposed to arrest, you can't punish.'

Comm: "If peaceful demonstrators rule the day, anarchist mobs rule the night, hijacking and discrediting the demonstrators' cause."

Presenter 1: "Tonight as the core of downtown cools, the nation's Commander-in-Chief is preparing to fly into the middle of the firestorm."

Presenter 2: "Word out of Washington
DC: President Clinton has just gone on record saying he strongly strongly believes that we should open this process up to all of those demonstrating on the outside; he says they should be part of it."

Presenter 1: "Tonight Mr Clinton says he is 'very sympathetic' to WTO protestors.
The President will be meeting trade ministers tomorrow morning.'

Comm: "Earth Report has meanwhile been busy negotiating unprecedented access to the trade negotiators themselves.

END PART ONE

Comm: "In the cold light of a new day, Earth Report finally gets behind the closed doors. Today we will meet the delegation from Kenya, a developing country that was to play a pivotal role in the drama about to unfold. But first, a delegation from an industrialised country: Australia."

Mark Vaile, Australian minister: "Well I'm Mark Vaile, Australia's Trade Minister from the Australian government, here representing Australia's national interests as a member of the WTO."

Comm: "The protestors are now kept well out of sight - if not out of mind.

"Mark Vaile heads into an official WTO committee meeting. We briefly manage to sneak in after him before being unceremoniously expelled.

"The Australian trade minister is already frustrated: he does not want to see these talks scuppered by ceding too high a priority to environmental issues."

Mark Vaile: "The issue of the environment is one that we take very seriously, I mean, Australia has a very good track record as far as environmental management is concerned. I just don't believe these issues should be taking a central focus. We want to maintain the focus on seeing a sound set of trading rules established."

Comm: "One-hundred and thirty-five trade ministers are attending the Seattle summit. We now arrange to spend some time with a senior delegate who hails from a continent accounting for just one per cent of global trade.

"Africa feels aggrieved. And Kenya wants to help lift the veil on what's going on inside the WTO."

Ambassador Rana: "My name is Kipkorir Aly Azad Rana: "I am from western part of Kenya.

"I am educated in United States and I am Kenya's ambassador to WTO and also Kenya's ambassador to United Nations in Geneva and United Nations in Vienna."

Comm: "Ambassador Rana is on his way to a pre-meeting meeting of the Kenyan delegation."

Ambassador Rana: "Kenya is the chair of African delegations to WTO."

Comm: "African nations want better market access and resent the rich world's negotiating style here."

Ambassador Rana: "There are areas in which definitely we need some more transparency. We are not happy with the back-room negotiations."

Comm: "With Africa refusing to play ball with the US and Europe, negotiations grind to a standstill and Dr Rana goes online to gauge press reaction back home."

Ambassador Rana: "We are right now stalled in our discussions because the rich countries are refusing to remove subsidies in the agricultural sector. You see, they are the ones. We have virtually removed our subsidies from agriculture.
We feel very, very strongly that this is going against the whole spirit of the World Trade Organisation."

Comm: "So indignant are African delegations about the way things are going that they've convened a meeting of African ministers to agree a joint position."

Mark Vaile: "You can imagine to sort of questions old frantic will be asking."

Comm: "The Australian Minister too is concerned about opinion at home."

Comm: "He's booked for a live slot with a breakfast TV show back in Sydney."

Reporter: "Hi Steve, how are you?"

Mark Vaile: "Well it's still cold and wet today and it was cold and wet last night, but certainly emotions were running very high and again today things are starting to heat up as we get down to the nitty gritty of what we're here to do.

"Thank you Steve, always a pleasure."

Comm: "Now it's back to the hotel where President Clinton is hosting a ministerial lunch."

Charlene Barshevsky introduces Clinton: "It is truly my greatest honour and my greatest pleasure to introduce to you the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton."

Comm: "In the Australian office, they're monitoring events ten floors below.

"The President fails to win the support of his audience. One delegate dismisses the Presidential address as smoke and mirrors with a generous helping of rhetoric."

President Clinton: "Let's open the process and listen to people even who we don't agree with. We might learn something. To prove that the quality of life of ordinary citizens in every country can be lifted - and an advance on the environmental front."

Parmentier: "Do you practise safe trade? Hey, I know you practice safe trade."

Comm: "Up in the convention press centre, Remi Parmentier is handing out safe trade condoms."

Parmentier: "No, it's the executive summary of the Greenpeace report on safe trade in the 21st century.

"For over a year, the US and Canadian governments have been using the World Trade Organisation to prevent the United Nations Environment Programme from adopting a protocol on bio-safety that would recognise the right of any country to say no to genetically modified organisms in food and agriculture."

Comm: "Parmentier believes that selling the idea of safe trade to Americans is as tough as selling safe sex to the Vatican. And in that, he loses his nerve."

Parmetnier: "This is our report on safe trade in the 21st century. I'm not giving you the executive summary but the report is very interesting."

"OK, thank you."

Comm: "Many environmental groups want UNEP to call the shots on big trade issues affecting the environment - be it logging or fishing or trading genetically modified products. And they want protocols brokered by UNEP to take precedence over WTO rulings." Abaza sync.

Hussein Abaza, Chief Economist, UNEP: "I've been hearing around here sentiments along these lines from a number of NGOs in particular, and emphasising the important role UNEP can play in this area to ensure that the environment is integrated in trade."

Comm: "As the trade talks stall and the WTO's world begins to fragment, triumphant protestors storm the citadel.

"This is the press centre; the world's cameras are here and these demonstrators are within easy earshot of delegates."

Protestor: "When you don't have the financial power of Bill Gates; when you don't have the political power of Bill Clinton, you got people power. Bill Clinton's political power cannot stop people power; Bill Gates' financial power cannot stop people power; we will save the world's forests for future generations."
(applause)

Barry Coates, WDM: "It's a shame to say that we told them so, but we did.

"There are 1,450 NGOs from 90 difference countries that said the priority has to be review, repair, reform and, and now what they've done is they've slipped into the trap of trying to get all of their commercially self-interested goodies on the table, and that's what's bouncing developing countries into it. Now at the last minute, they must not strike a bad deal."

Protestor: "If there was real democracy we wouldn't have to protest. We would have been involved from the beginning.
But that's not the case. (Police: back up!')
The real give and take goes on in back rooms and behind closed doors. Is that democracy? I don't think so."

Cameraman: "Let go! No! I'm the press!"

Police: "Put your hands behind your back!"

Cameraman: "Hey! What's going on here?"

Police: "OK, we got him, we got him."

Cameraman: "Canadian press, I'm Canadian press!" Police: "He's Canadian press!"

"You don't push the police partner, you don't push the police."
Comm: "It all happens within full view of delegates and as the temperature continues to rise, we go in search of Ambassador Rana.

"We want to know the result of the African ministers' meeting. Could it be that for the first time Africa is speaking with one voice?"

Ambassador Rana: "Well after you left me when we went into the Africa group meeting, the most important issue on the agenda there was the issue of a lack of transparency. And as a result, the African Ministers of Trade decided to come up with a very strong statement by saying that they will not be able to join any consensus to meet the objectives of this meeting unless their concerns are taken on board."

Comm: "As the talks lurch towards collapse, the Australian minister is taking stock at a news conference."

Mark Vaile: "When you get into a negotiating situation about the very complex issues that we are negotiating, and the hundreds of millions of people that are affected and that stand to benefit from a better arranged set of trading rules across the world, then it gets into a very emotive circumstance. And with the number of people involved, of course it's going to be unruly from time to time."

Comm: "But with developing countries refusing to be bullied, talks are now crashing deadlines.

"In the delegates' foyer no-one seems too sure what's happening."

Ambassador Rana: "It's going to be another three or four hours."

Comm: "Those who've been burning the candle at both ends for days are exhausted.

"It's getting late. The Australian trade minister's still locked in a meeting. We track down Bruce, his assistant."

Bruce: "I can't tell you when they'll end.
I'd suggest they'll go well into the night and perhaps even six o'clock tomorrow morning, maybe later, I don't know."

Comm: "Was the minister prepared for this when he came here?"

Bruce: "Oh yes, don't worry, he was expecting to be sleepless in Seattle."

Comm: "Sometime towards midnight the WTO waves the white flag of surrender."

Komo 4 News Presenter: "Good morning to you, I'm Gary Lindsey. This hour: protestors say they won. The WTO meetings in Seattle end in failure."

Comm: "The Battle of Seattle was a tactical, strategic and public relations disaster for the WTO."

Komo 4 Presenter: "Asked whether he was considering resigning because of this failure, Moore said: 'No.'"

Comm: "The WTO is still licking its wounds.

Within weeks, the United Nations Environment Programme brokered a deal allowing countries to ban imports of genetically modified products - without fear of trade sanctions from the WTO.

End