Anti-Apec talks before summit

By Warren Gamble

Groups opposed to Apec will hold their own conference in Auckland next month, with free trade critics flying in from several Apec countries.

The Aotearoa/New Zealand Apec Monitoring Group will host the two-day Alternatives to the Apec Agenda conference on September 11 and 12 at Auckland University.

A group spokesman, Aziz Choudry, said it would highlight the failure of Apec's free-market agenda and outline alternative people-friendly approaches.

The conference would finish with a rally on September 12, the first day of the Apec summit.

Mr Choudry said the rally was planned as a peaceful gathering in which families could take part.

"I don't think people need to be intimidated by the fact that there will be all these overseas security personnel and police on the streets," he said.

"This is about a contest of ideas and unfortunately it often seems to us that it's the ideas the Government is more scared about than any real threat to the conference."

Among guest speakers at the forum will be a representative of the Bougainville Interim Government, Moses Havini, the executive director of a Philippines research organisation, Antonio Tujan, and a Canadian professor, Sunera Thobani, who organised a women's conference against Apec in Vancouver.

Mexican campaigner and researcher Dr Alejandro Villamar Calderon will also attend. He was staying with Mr Choudry in 1996 when two Security Intelligence Service officers were caught breaking into the Christchurch home.

Labour leader Helen Clark suggested last year that the SIS was interested in overseas visitors, not Mr Choudry.

However, Mr Choudry said later that he had invited Dr Calderon three months after a warrant authorising the SIS operation had been signed.