The Hindu Business Line : War is a corporate weapon: WSF leaders

THE World Social Forum 2004 opened here with the decided recognition that war has arrived as a weapon to further economic interests of powerful nations and large corporations.

Speakers at the opening plenary of the WSF agreed that the American campaign in Iraq was a political strategy to establish corporate hegemony. The interests of big business is threatening the lives of ordinary people across the world, they concluded.

Arguably the opening plenary's star speaker, the booker-winning writer and social activist, Ms Arundhati Roy, said the new American century wants superiority — economic and military — at all costs.

Ms Roy said democratically elected leaders in the world would be able to rule freely only if corporates such as Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton and Arthur Andersen are allowed a free run.

"It is a crime to be poor in the era of corporate globalisation. There is no country in the world that is not caught in the cross-hairs of nuclear weapons and IMF cheques," Ms Roy said.

Other speakers echoed Mr Roy's concerns. Mr Amir Rekaby, a Paris-based writer who is a member of the Jakarta Peace Consensus and the Iraqi National Democratic Opposition, said, the war on Iraq was no accident. Earlier, speaking at a press conference, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, British Labor Party MP, said the world is divided into two. One with untold access to weapons of mass destruction and untold wealth and another with moral power. The WSF represents that second world, Mr Corbyn said.