At the WTO meet in Seattle, governments are expected to endorse a new bout of global trade negotiations dubbed the `Millennium Round.'

In a statement released recently, RAFI said, the US will press for US-biased agricultural rules and tougher intellectual property provisions related to biotechnology. Some delegates and civil society organizations (CSO) attending the Seattle meeting fear that Uncle Sam will be tempted to use Terminator or (more likely) "Traitor" (the remote-control of crop production traits) Technology to unilaterally dictate trade policies to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

According to Pat Mooney, executive director of RAFI, a Canadian-based CSO: "It would be nonsense to suggest that the US is developing trait control technology for economic or biowarfare purposes. On the other hand, history shows that it would be imprudent to believe that the USA will turn its back on a technological weapon that could help fulfill its trade and foreign policy goals".

"When we met with Mr. Glickman a month ago," Hope Shand, Research Director for RAFI-USA recalls, "we told him that Monsanto and AstraZeneca had abandoned the Terminator and that the Rockefeller Foundation, along with international agricultural research institutions and several countries, are all opposed to the commercial use of the technology. Glickman still refused to abandon the sterility strategy. This is kindling needless and undoubtedly premature alarm that the technologies could become a kind of trait sanction." Millennium Round-UP? According to RAFI, Traitor technologies give the U.S. a unique and powerful weapon that could be employed to enforce its own agricultural and patent rules on trading partners. The use of the technology to gain control of the world's food supply should be discussed during the upcoming Millennium Round.

"The United States has consistently used its own trade and agricultural legislation to threaten and apply sanctions against its trading rivals," Silvia Ribeiro notes, "It has rarely hesitated to defy GATT or WTO procedures and international norms if they don't advance U.S. interests.

If the U.S. wants to shed its 'bad boy' image it should declare Terminator and Traitor Tech contrary to public morality.

Governments in Seattle should acknowledge the primacy of national food security and the environment over trade agreements." "Seattle should not launch the Millennium Round-Up," Hope Shand insists.

"Not only should Traitor Tech be rejected in Seattle," Pat Mooney of RAFI adds, "in Geneva, the Ad Hoc Working Group revising the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention should also challenge the U.S. research as a violation of Article One of the protocol." Julie Delahanty concurs, "The Terminator was developed by the US government for the announced purpose of denying farmers in foreign countries the right to save seed.

(Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) is a Canada-basednon-governmental organisation)