As the 6th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) starts on Tuesday thousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong, demanding halt to the upcoming talks.
Nearly 16000 protesters gathered in the city to register their annoyance against the WTO policies amid tight security, said Guillermo Rogel, Director of International Programmes War on Want, heading one of the protesting group.
"We have come to Hong Kong to reject the imposition of a deal which will devastate the lives of poor people. It is better to abandon this round of talks than abandon the poor, he added.
Ministers from almost all the member countries have reached here and are informally meeting with each other, discussing matters of interest.
Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar has been nominated as the facilitator for negotiations on non-agriculture market access at the conference.
This is the first such opportunity for Pakistan in the Ministerial Conference which, according to an official announcement, has been widely acknowledged. Pakistan was has been entrusted with this responsibility in recognition of its positive role in the negotiations on industrial market access at the WTO in recent years.
On Sunday, Humayun met Hong Kong Commerce Minister John Tsang, who is also chairman of the WTO Ministerial Conference, and WTO Director General Pascal Lamy separately and discussed expected outcome of the negotiations besides exchanging ideas for facilitating convergence in the 6th round.
The Commerce Minister also held discussions with the Commerce Minister of Zambia being the co-ordinator of the LDCs group who according one of the officials was not expecting any breakthrough in the negotiations.
Guillermo Rogel added, "for too long people in the developing world have seen their livelihoods threatened by rich countries promoting a greedy corporate agenda."
The current week starting from today would be the week of protests in Hong Kong with the police also closely monitoring the situation as well.