Bolkestein blames Arab ‘isolation’ for terrorism

Date: 15/04/04

ARAB economies have been urged to open up to the outside world to help combat international terrorism.

Speaking in a debate on globalization in Brussels last night (14 April), Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said one of the reasons poverty is rampant in parts of the Arab world is because it is disconnected from the global economy.

"The combination of unemployment and a sharp rise in the population leads to the self-proclaimed status of victim, or a fundamentalist isolation," he said.

"Some resort to terrorism, a phenomenon which oddly enough can only be perpetrated by making use of the fruits of globalization," added the Dutchman.

"The cause of poverty in Arab countries is not the Western world: it is their inability to participate in the global economic system."

Claiming that globalization speeds up the end of authoritarian regimes, he said the EU should play a stronger role in freeing international trade and promoting globalization. He also branded as shameful NGOs who applauded the collapse of the World Trade Organization talks in Cancùn last September.

"NGOs are barking up the wrong tree. They need fewer subsidies and more common sense.

"Demonstrators marching against the so-called devil of globalization say there is too much free trade, but anti-globalists want poor countries to stay poor."

Bolkestein was taking part in a head-to-head debate at the European Parliament with MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, joint leader of the Greens group. Offering an alternative argument, Cohn-Bendit said the breakdown of the Cancun talks demonstrated that the basic principles of globalization - the same rules for all - do not work.

"Is Commissioner Bolkestein suggesting the free market can solve everything? If he is, he is wrong because it can't. The big problem with globalization is that it leads to unequal development. We cannot continue with a globalized world without more democratic control."