Billed as the most important meeting of the new millennium, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD X) in Bangkok in mid-February deserved its designation as "mother of all conferences." While it might not have had the cachet of a Davos World Economic Forum, it did not lack for luster and was clearly more focused.
However, as a meeting principally of government representatives, Bangkok could not escape comparison with Seattle. Would it repeat Seattle's failure or break new ground? The answer, for now at least, is that the battle of Seattle has given way to the truce of Thailand.
Why were delegates to UNCTAD able to reach a consensus on a draft action plan while in many cases the same delegates to the WTO in Seattle were not? Some of the more significant differences had to do with an atmosphere of constructive rather than divisive debate, the search for consensus on a set of principles as opposed to the nitty-gritty negotiation of trade agreements, inclusion of nongovernment organizations (although, frankly, they need to tone down their rhetoric and upgrade the quality of their arguments) and, last, a culture of compromise.