IMF and World Bank Cancel This Year's Annual Meetings

Wall Street Journal 17sep01

WASHINGTON -- The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank announced Monday that they have canceled this year's annual meetings, saying the move was taken to allow security agents to focus on issues raised by last week's terrorist attacks in the U.S.

In a joint statement, officials of the two multinational lending agencies based in Washington said their normal operations would not be affected by the cancellation.

"This decision was taken out of deepest respect and sympathy for the families of all those touched by the horrific events of last Tuesday and in order to dedicate law enforcement personnel fully to the extraordinary and immediate priorities at hand," said IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler and World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

The two officials said they expected to return to their regular schedule of meetings next year, which would mean a spring meeting of finance ministers from the 24 nations on the steering committees for both the IMF and World Bank. Messrs. Koehler and Wolfensohn said they would find other ways to deal with the issues that would have been addressed at the annual meetings.

After last Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Washington's Police Chief Charles Ramsey urged the IMF and World Bank to cancel the meetings. City police had been counting on colleagues from other jurisdictions, including New York City, to help them deal with what they said could be as many as 100,000 protesters at the meetings.

World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey said last week that officials at both institutions were intent on helping to make sure that police forces were deployed in the best way to protect national security.

Many of the groups that had been planning to protest already have announced that they were calling off their demonstrations.

On Sunday, the Mobilization for Global Justice, the umbrella group for many of the protest organizations, said it was calling off its street demonstrations but would continue with plans for a "people's summit" of teach-ins and discussions Sept. 26-28. "Our decision to postpone was made out of respect for the victims of this tragedy," the group said.

Last Friday, the AFL-CIO, Friends of the Earth and Oxfam America all announced that they were pulling out of the planned demonstrations.

While the annual meetings of the 183-nation IMF and World Bank have been canceled, officials have indicated that some events that normally take place around those discussions would continue.

Last week, the German Finance Ministry said a meeting of the finance ministers and central-bank presidents of the seven wealthiest nations, the Group of Seven, was likely to be held but that the meeting might be moved from Washington. The G-7 normally meets immediately before the spring and fall gatherings of the IMF and World Bank.

A German Finance Ministry spokeswoman said Monday that a decision about when and where to hold the meeting of finance ministers and central-bank governors would likely be made by the end of the week. The IMF was due to hold an annual meeting Sept. 29-30 in Washington.