Nationalization for Ashanti threatened

12:10p EST Sunday, February 13, 2000

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

I thought I would try to pre-empt the inevitable media
inquiries by issuing a statement on behalf of the Gold
Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. that the unidentified
man cited last night in the following Reuters story
about the International Monetary Fund was NOT
GATA Chairman Bill Murphy, who was home in
Dallas all weekend and remains committed to a much
more metaphorical approach to the IMF problem.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

MAN HITS IMF CHIEF IN FACE
WITH PIE AT TRADE MEETING

BANGKOK, Feb. 13 (Reuters) -- An unidentified man
pushed a cream pie into the face of International
Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus as he was
preparing to give his last official speech as the
agency's managing director on Sunday. Camdessus
was not injured and was preparing to go ahead with
his speech.

The man attacked Camdessus as he was chatting to
delegates at a summit of the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development, witnesses said.

The IMF chief tried to shield his face with a clipboard
but was sprayed with cream from the pie. The assailant
was bundled away by police.

Camdessus, a keynote speaker at the weeklong meeting,
seemed unfazed by the incident.

There was no immediate explanation for the attack.

Human-rights groups and left-wing activists have been
protesting on the fringes of the summit against what
they see as the evils of free trade and its impact on
poorer developing countries.

They accuse agencies like the International Monetary
Fund of increasing the gap between rich and poor and
catering only to the needs of giant Western
corporations.