The sixth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, the top decision-making body of the international trade talks mechanism, will begin on Tuesday amid possible strong protests in Hong Kong.

"We will tell the world loudly that we are against globalization and the so-called free world trade," a farmer's son Choi Kim-soo from the Republic of Korea told a gathering in the Victorian Park, waving a handful of anti-WTO brochures. His fellows are preparing for a second demonstration on Tuesday.

More than 3,000 protesters from Hong Kong and other parts of the world on Sunday demonstrated along the city's narrow streets. Local taxi drivers complained about the subsequent traffic controland some shops even closed to avoid possible damage.

"The parade on Sunday was peaceful and there's no chaos," a policeman surnamed Wang said. "We hope the next demonstrations will not disturb the citizen's life too much," he said when patrolling around the Victorian Park, which is designated by the government for NGO gatherings.

In fact, the local government dispatched about 9,000 police to secure the week-long WTO conference, the largest-ever international meeting to be held in Hong Kong since 1997.

However, anti-globalization demonstrations indeed turned into disasters in previous WTO meetings, and even burst into riots during the third ministerial conference in Seattle in the United States in 1999.

As the most difficult part of the Doha Round talks focused on agriculture, farmers from countries like the Republic of Korea have tried to make their voices heard before the conference. Otheranti-WTO campaigners include organizations standing for environment and labor rights.

Cheng Guoqiang, a researcher from the State Council Developmentand Research Center in China, said that many protesters don't actually oppose free trade but the unfair international trade mechanism, which lacks transparency.

Supporters of the WTO talks say a trade deal could generate billions of dollars in benefits and possibly lift millions out of poverty, but opponents say it would largely benefit richer nationsat the expense of developing countries.

"They said if you are covered in the global regime, you will benefit from the free trade," said Mohiuddin Ahmad, an anti-WTO protester from Bangladesh, "But the problem is that developed countries have controlled the world trade, while the poor countries don't have any say in it."

When a WTO ministerial conference began in Doha, Qatar, in 2001,there were high hopes that the "Doha Development Round" would for the first time put developing countries high on the trade agenda.

As a new member of the WTO and the largest developing country, China held that the WTO talks should solve the problems facing developing countries and give them necessary special treatment to help them develop. Zhang Xiangcheng, director of the WTO Affairs Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China hopes WTO members could reach agreement on development issues during the Hong Kong meeting.

Source: Xinhua