- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- EU Commission President Romano Prodi, NATO Secretary-General
George Robertson and European Central Bank Governor Wim Duisenberg all
have a past as Bilderbergers.
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- SHAPING CAPITALISM
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- "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.
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- Bilderberg participants abide by the so-called Chatham
House rule, which forbids everyone present from disclosing what anybody
else has said.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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