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UN Global Compact to be launched in Sri Lanka The Sri Lanka
segment of the United Nations' Global Compact, a prestigious international
business programme, is to be launched in Colombo on April 21 at
the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Several leading
companies in Sri Lanka have already received membership in this
scheme. They include the Aitken Spence group, Ceylon Oxygen Co.
Ltd, Caltex Ltd, Commercial Bank of Ceylon Ltd, Forbes and Walker
Ltd, John Keells Holdings Ltd, and John Ward Ceylon Pvt. Ltd. The
applications of some more prestigious companies are currently being
processed. A chamber statement
said that about 15 CEOs and leading businessmen from the US would
be attending the Colombo launch where Bradman Weerakoon, Secretary
to the Prime Minister will deliver the keynote address. The Global
Compact, initially proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in
an address to the World Economic Forum in January 1999, is aimed
at building the social and environmental pillars required to sustain
the new global economy and make globalisation work for the people's
benefit. It has attracted hundreds of high powered business entities
from all over the world, evolving into the first global forum designed
to address critical issues related to globalization. The Compact
encompasses nine principles in the following areas: human rights,
labour standards and the environment, and requires participating
companies to act on these principles in their own corporate domains. The chamber
statement said that the companies involved are diverse and represent
different industries. The participating companies are all leaders;
and they all aspire to manage global growth in a responsible manner
which takes into consideration the interests and concerns of a broad
spectrum of stakeholders which includes employees, investors, customers,
advocacy groups, business partners and communities. It said the
chamber is also organising one-to-one meetings with the visiting
US delegation. The delegation will focus on business-to-business engagements with sectors such as construction (Hambantota Harbour and similar large scale projects), telecommunications, power and energy, as well as tourism (hotels and travel). By Bill
Powell That conflict
may not last long. Indeed, though Bush himself has never publicly
speculated on just how long it would take to topple Saddam, you
know that in the privacy of his own thoughts and prayers he is hoping
it's not weeks but days. Now more than even, given all the china
that has been busted up during the ugly, pre-war phase of this conflict,
the Bush administration desperately needs this to be over quickly.
It needs photos of liberated Iraqis welcoming victorious troops,
if not necessarily dancing in the streets and placing flowers in
our soldiers' guns. And it needs, in the days following war, tranquillity.
Calm … not chaos. It needs all
of that, badly, because the costs of the peace, both diplomatic
and financial, are going to be enormous - even if things go well
inside Iraq. If they don't the price, in terms of blood and in terms
of treasure, could go from enormous to burdensome, even for a country
as wealthy and powerful as the U.S. Bush's war in Iraq, a war of
choice, not of necessity, is such a huge gamble in part because
so much depends on what happens after the shooting stops. For all
the hand wringing about how the U.S. has abandoned Afghanistan since
the Taliban's fall, as long as al Qaeda (or some reasonable facsimile)
doesn't reconstitute itself there, from the U.S. perspective that
is progress. Iraq, at the heart of the tumultuous Middle East, with
its 23 million people and vast oil reserves, is altogether different,
more important, and much more dangerous. The diplomatic
fallout over the war demonstrates that more clearly than anything
else. Something, inevitably, was going to knock the world out of
its post Cold War inertia - the era in which the West couldn't think
of anything to do, so it just made what it already had (NATO, the
EU) bigger. Sept. 11, followed by Iraq, were those big things. We
are; most assuredly, in the post-Cold War era, and things are going
to look very different, almost no matter what happens. Take just
one country as an example, picked not entirely out of the blue.
France's President Jacques Chirac told Time Magazine in late February
that he has always worked for "transatlantic solidarity,"
and that will be as true "tomorrow" as it was "yesterday".
If he actually believes that, he is in diplomatic dreamland. Even
if everything goes smoothly in Iraq and the cafeteria at the House
of Representatives goes back to selling French fries (they're "freedom"
fries now) that would not be true. France is now
the standard-bearer of a potent anti-Americanism, a position it
actively sought and eagerly exploited during the Iraq debate. (Germany,
another erstwhile ally, is its eager No. 2.) True, if the war ends
quickly and the aftermath calmly in Iraq, some of the poison that
currently exists in America's relationships will inevitably diminish.
If things go badly, however, anti-Americanism will shift from being
merely potent to being toxic. That will have serious consequences.
The Bush administration could have a tougher time doing everything
from winning co-operation in the war on terror to negotiating trade
pacts. How the U.S. deals with this whole phenomenon will be central to the rest of George Bush's tenure in the White House, whether it's two more years or six more. (Fortune, March 31) |
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