Poor states must fight on for fair trade: Annan

World trade is opening up to poorer nations and they must fight on for market access as they try to boost business between themselves, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday.
Opening a 180-nation UN trade and development summit in Brazil, Annan told poor nations to raise pressure on wealthy states for access to farm markets and slash tariff barriers to combat what he called "discrimination" in global trade.
"What we lack is a development-friendly trade regime. That may be changing," Annan told delegates in Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial and financial hub.
He spoke a day after rich and poor nations met on the summit sidelines and said they had broken a nine-month deadlock in world trade talks by agreeing to put farm trade reform at the centre of negotiations.
The 11th UN Conference on Trade and Development aims to create what Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called a "new economic and trade geography" favouring poorer people and poorer countries.
Lula told delegates that Sao Paulo's corporate towers next to stinking shantytowns showed the "contradictions" in Brazil and the deep wealth inequalities Latin America's largest economy must fix. As police helicopters buzzed overhead, some 1,000 protesters from Brazilian unions and landless movements marched toward the conference centre, which is surrounded by metal fences and thousands of police and soldiers.
Three members of a union involved in the march held up placards reading "BUSH OUT!" as Annan spoke. The placards were quickly ripped down by security guards and the protesters forced to sit down. The watchword of Unctad has become "coherence," a reference to preparing poorer nations' legal systems, infrastructure and business regulations to attract investment and trade in a globalized world.
Lula, Brazil's first working-class president, noted that poor nations' annual per capita income had barely risen from around $200 in the 40 years since Unctad was formed. Rich nations have seen theirs triple from $11,400 to $32,400, he said.
Lula called on another 40 developing nations to join a 44-nation system to break down mutual trade barriers. The United Nations estimates that poor nations could generate an extra $15.5 billion in trade if they cut by half tariff barriers they use to protect certain industries and crops.