http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3031717.stm

Elite power brokers' secret talks


By Emma Jane Kirby
BBC correspondent in Paris



The world's financial and political elite are to hold a
closed meeting in France on Thursday where delegates
are expected to be focusing their attention on post war
Iraq.

The Bilderberg meeting will be held in Versailles just before the
start of the Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers in
nearby Paris.

Bilderberg, which was founded in the 1950s by Prince Bernhard
of the Netherlands, is said to steer international policy from
behind closed doors.

Its critics say that it is a capitalist organisation which
operates entirely through self interest.

By anyone's standards, it is a
bit of a mystery.

There are no members as such - instead, an invitation list is
comprised each year by an unknown steering committee, but
participants are mainly leading and powerful figures in the
fields of business and politics.

Political clout

The meetings are cloaked in secrecy and participants rarely
reveal their attendance, although this year's list is rumoured
to include the American banker David Rockefeller and Henry
Kissinger.

What the group actually does is no clearer either, although
it's known to be an extremely influential lobbying group with a
good deal of political clout on both sides of the Atlantic.

Key members of both the British and the US governments are
said to have attended gatherings.

But critics accuse Bilderberg of being sinister and
conspiratorial - if what the delegates are discussing is really
for the good of ordinary people they ask, then why can't they
publicise it?