Pascal Lamy opened the WTO meeting with a 'magic wand' and said he hoped to conjure up a positive result. Yesterday, protesters staged a theatrical denunciation of the organisation's director-general, calling him a 'sorcerer with a box full of illusions'.
Led by French anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove, the noisy dramatisation, called Pascal Lamy and the Sorcerer's Box - a play on the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - unfolded before the world's media at the conference press centre.
'It was about the WTO and the big transnational companies who want to take everything in the world,' the French sheep farmer said.
'This was a protest about the farmers' issue all over the world - Africa, Asia, South America - a protest for food sovereignty and to say that we have to put agriculture out of WTO.'
Gerard Durand, of the French Confederation Paysanne, said: 'The only development will be for the multinational companies to strengthen their death grip on markets around the globe.'
A noticeable absentee when police and South Korean protesters clashed earlier in the week, Mr Bove joined Thursday's protest by the Korean Peasants' League.
