WTO standoff far from over as protests continue
Foreign Desk Report

HONG KONG—Anti-globalization protesters fought pitched battles with Hong Kong police on Saturday outside a convention center where feuding ministers from around the world were making a last-ditch effort to rescue a trade pact.
Witnesses said hundreds of protesters, mainly from South Korean farmers’ groups who say free trade is ruining them, broke through police lines to reach the harbor-front building, although they were prevented from getting inside. “They were standing just across the street,” said one reporters reporter at the scene, where police fired volleys of tear gas into crowds they had struggled all afternoon to hold back with pepper spray and batons. “They made several advances on police but pulled back a block or so after tear gas was used.”
It was the worst street violence in the former British colony since angry protests following China’s bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing. Fifty-four people were injured in the fighting, including at least five police officers, the government said. Most of the injured were Koreans. Nine hundred protesters were detained, Police Commissioner Dick Lee told a late-night news conference. When asked if they would be arrested, he said “they will be handled according to the law.”
European and Japanese trade delegations were brought to the convention center by boat even as the fighting raged, heading in for an overnight haggle to reach at least some minimal accords with their World Trade Organization partners. Diplomats said a failure to resolve sticking points before the six-day talks end on Sunday would jeopardize the chances of a deal next year freeing up global business in farm and industrial goods and services.
Raising the stakes, the coordinator for least-developed countries at the talks warned that they could walk away from the talks if their demand for duty-free, quota-free access to rich nations’ markets were not met.