Secretive Bilderberg group to meet in SwedenBy Peter
Starck
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - EU enlargement and the bloc's military role,
NATO's future and developments in Russia and China will top the agenda
when senior Western business leaders, politicians and a sprinkle of
royalty meet in Sweden this week.
The Bilderberg group, a semi-secret discussion forum for the Western
world's power elite, will hold its annual meeting in the town of
Stenungsund on the Swedish west coast on May 24-28, Swedish newspapers
reported on Wednesday.
A 900-metre long metal fence has been erected around Hotel
Stenungsbaden, the meeting venue, to keep intruders away, regional daily
Goteborgs-Posten said, publishing a picture of the fenced-in hotel.
Anti-globalisation demonstrators are expected to protest outside and
local police see the event as a useful training exercise ahead of the
mid-June European Union summit in the city of Gothenburg 50 km (30 miles)
to the south.
The Bilderberg group, named after the hotel where it first met in 1954,
was formed early in the Cold War era in reaction to a growing Communist
threat. Today, many critics see it as a conspiracy and an agent of a new
capitalist world order.
Bilderberg member Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of the board of commercial
bank SEB and head of Sweden's influential Wallenberg family whose empire
has a finger in most big Swedish industries, played down the group's
importance.
"This is one of many meetings all over the world where decision-makers
get together," he told the daily Dagens Nyheter, which earlier published
the main agenda topics.
Invited as speakers, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were groomed at
Bilderberg meetings before rising to fame as U.S. President and British
Prime Minister respectively.
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, NATO Secretary-General George
Robertson and European Central Bank Governor Wim Duisenberg all have a
past as Bilderbergers.
SHAPING CAPITALISM
"Even though no formal decisions are made...this group, together with
many others, has contributed to shaping the kind of capitalism we have
today and cemented the world's leading business elites together," Goran
Greider, editor-in-chief of Dala-Demokraten, a regional Swedish daily,
said in a live studio debate on Sweden's TV4 television.
Bilderberg participants abide by the so-called Chatham House rule,
which forbids everyone present from disclosing what anybody else has said.
"The secrecy is regarded as very provocative. Men in power talk towards
consensus behind closed doors on timely issues on the political agenda,"
Ulf Bjereld, a political science professor at Gothenburg University, said.
Bilderberg members include former U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, U.S. Senators Christopher Dodd, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel,
World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, France's central bank governor
Jean-Claude Trichet and former IMF heads Michel Camdessus and Stanley
Fischer.
Also listed are the chairmen of car makers Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, and
DaimlerChrysler, Juergen Schrempp, former British finance minister Kenneth
Clarke, Dutch Queen Beatrix and Xerox Corp CEO Paul Allaire. |
