The World Bank cancelled today a summit scheduled to start on June 25 in Barcelona due to fears of disruptions from demonstrators.

Protesters from around the world were planning to converge in Barcelona for the 2001 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics. The meeting will take place online instead.

A World Bank spokesperson Caroline Anstey likened the protesters to book-burners for their efforts to disrupt meetings.

"Years ago people used to burn books to try and clamp down on academic freedom - now they try to prevent academics from reaching debating halls, Anstey said. "This is hardly progress. Fortunately the internet means that academic debates can now take place on line."

But activists note how it is organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that usually meet secretly and are not accountable to any electorate.

"These institutions are fundamentally undemocratic despite whatever PR effort they put on," said Warcry, a New York activist who planned to attend the Barcelona protests.

In a clear public relations effort the World Bank framed the summit merely as a meeting for academics to discuss methods to reduce poverty.

"But poverty alleviation is not or has ever been the World Bank's main agenda," said Warcry.

The World Bank also claimed to have worked with demonstrators but without success.

"Despite our efforts to reach out to some of the groups planning demonstrations, and to include them in the conference, the intention of many of the groups who plan to converge on Barcelona is not to join the debate or to contribute constructively to the discussion, but to disrupt it," said Anstey. "We do not want to expose academics from around the world and our hosts in Spain to such a situation. It is time to take a stand against this kind of threat to free discussion."

Many activists have noted the irony that the World Bank is accusing them of being a "threat to free discussion" although one of the constant demands of the protest movement is inclusion of the civil society in transnational organizations.

Take the Free Trade Area of the Americas for example. For the past six years the nations of 34 North and South American nations hade been negotiating in secret with almost no public input except from heads of major corporations.

That changed when up to 60,000 protesters converged on Quebec to expose the falsehoods behind the agreement and to initiate a public debate on the agreement.

"The FTAA would still be a closely guarded secret, withheld from the public, except for the phenomenal citizens' trade movement that has arisen in America and all around the globe," wrote Jim Hightower in his newsletter "The Hightower Lowdown."

"This growing movement is daring to confront, expose, and rally a grassroots rebellion against the globaloneyists who conspire through insider deals like the FTAA to do nothing less than enthrone multinational corporations as the world's new sovereigns."

Few cities want to become the next Quebec or Seattle, noted Warcry.

"The fact that the World Bank has cancelled its meeting because of anticipated protest shows how successful this movement has been in terms of confronting these institutions, but at the same time they continue their policies anyway -- it is a qualified success."

While the "anti-globalization/pro-democracy" movement will not have an opportunity to confront the World Bank on the streets of Barcelona, activists may still have a chance to affect the meeting, according to Warcry.

"If they are going to meet online, the fact is we have plenty of people who are tech savvy enough to disrupt this meeting via hactivism.

"As Utah Phillips said: 'the people who are destroying the Earth have names, faces, and addresses' and it is our job to hold these people accountable," she added.