[Newspoetry] Bob Naiman pies IMF chief in Bangkok

EX-RESIDENT HURLS PIE AT IMF CHIEF
Retiring official tagged by activist at trade gathering

AP and the News Gazette

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The outgoing chief of the International Monetary Fund
got a rude retirement present Sunday when an American anti-free trade
activist -- a former Champaign County Board Member -- penetrated security at
a trade conference and hit him with a pie in the face.
     Moments before Michel Camdessus was to deliver his last speech as IMF
chairman, activist Robert Naiman hurled a fruit-and-cream pie inside the
meeting hall where some 190 nations are holding the UN Conference on Trade
and Development. 
     The action left Camdessus -- whom many activists see as Public Enemy
No. 1 for dictating financial policies to poor countries -- and Thailand's
tough-talking security officials with pie on their faces.
     At a farewell press conference, Camdessus laughed off the attack,
calling it "professional risks, part of my job."
     "I like pastry," Camdessus joked. "I have been, during the morning, a
little bit enjoying the taste of my fingers."
     Commenting on protesters who burned his image in effigy outside the
conference center, Camdessus said he was not worried about an attack in the
street. "I take what is said to me with a pinch of salt," he said.
     UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the attack "a bit rude."
     The pie-thrower, who identified himself as Robert Reuel Naiman, 34, of
Washington D.C., said he performed the stunt to give the IMF chief "a
friendly reminder of what we think of his policies and to give a warning to
his successor we expect different policies."
     Naiman, who served on the Champaign County Board from December 1992 to
November 1995 as a Democratic representative from Urbana, later told a news
conference that he was surprised how easy it was. When I faced him, I
thought, 'Why pick this guy?' because he was a very small man, but when I
thought about what he had done to children all over the world, he deserved
this," Naiman said. "He is very arrogant."
     Naiman, who said he was a researcher with the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington, said that he had been at the WTO meeting in
Seattle.
     Naiman listed his hobby as "smashing fascism" in a 1992 biographical
sketch he filled for The News-Gazette.
     His brand of protest politics has made international news wires before.
He was arrested by Israeli police in February 1996 while protesting Israeli
demolition of at least five Palestinian homes, which authorities said were
built illegally in Hebron. Naiman was held under house arrest for about a
week before being released. 
     Camdessus was chatting to delegates in the main conference hall before
making a keynote speech when Naiman sneaked up beside him and threw a pie
with a shout of "Happy Birthday!"
     "It was a small cake, very tasty," Naiman told the ITV television
network before he was taken away by security.
     Camdessus, 66, who is retiring after heading the IMF since 1987, gave
his speech afterward without mentioning the attack.
     Naiman was accredited to the conference as a member of a
non-governmental organization called "Fifty Years Is Enough" and THai
authorities were at pains to state he had not breached the tight security at
the Queen Sirikt Convention Center.
     Camdessus, who was uninjured, did not press charges. National Police
Chief Pracha Promnok told reporters that Naiman would not be deported but
vowed to keep him under tight surveillance. He was expelled from the
conference.
     'I'm disappointed," said Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan. "It's
absolutely impossible to prevent such an incident. We have left no stone
unturned in our planning and preparation. We have been able to prevent
bigger problems."

---pies not bombs?