[WTO Talks] WTO drive for early deal faces test

From The Peninsula Qutar Online

Source ::: Reuters

GENEVA: Hopes for a global free trade deal in early 2006 face a reality check next week in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos where ministers must spell out how they plan to achieve it, diplomats said yesterday.

After World Trade Organisation (WTO) states last month set a new end-April deadline for an accord, the Jan. 27-28 meeting of some two dozen ministers at the annual gathering of business and political leaders offers a first test of their resolve.

But the diplomats said that the signs are not reassuring.

Developing countries insist that the European Union must make a further move to open its farm market, while Brussels is equally adamant that it is up to others — such as Brazil and India — to concede in areas such as industrial goods.

“I think it is possible,” said one WTO ambassador from a leading developing country, referring to the April 30 target.

“But we need movement quickly, and you cannot escape the fact that that without further movement from the European Union on (agricultural) market access, it looks difficult to unblock the negotiation,” he added.

However, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told the European Parliament on Monday that the bloc’s trading partners had to “make the offers and the contributions that will be needed” to conclude the WTO talks — the Doha round — on time.

He has also begun to issue warnings that the EU will not be rushed into any accords just to meet a WTO timetable.

The 149-state WTO had initially aimed to wrap up a draft deal in Hong Kong on lowering barriers to business across the globe, which supporters say would give economies a big boost and help lift millions out of poverty.

But deep differences between developed and developing states, particularly over agriculture, where the EU and others have high protectionist barriers, forced it to delay the deadline until the end of April.

The Hong Kong meeting saw agreement on 2013 as the date for ending farm goods export subsidies—widely regarded as the most pernicious form of subsidy — and some measures to give the poorest WTO states more access to rich nation markets.

But since then, there have been no further meetings, and almost one of the four months the WTO gave itself will have gone by the time ministers meet in the Swiss Alps.

“We need a political signal about who is ready to do what,” India’s ambassador to the WTO Ujal Singh Bhatia told Reuters.

The final deadline for a WTO deal is fixed by the expiry of US presidential powers to negotiate in mid-2007. Counting back, it would be possible to delay a draft pact until the end of July this year, but not any later, diplomats say.

“It does not matter so much if the end-April deadline is missed, providing there is movement, that real negotiations are underway,” said another senior trade diplomat.