[WTO Doha round] talks face crucial week as deadline looms

from Stuff New Zealand

GENEVA: The World Trade Organisation (WTO) faces a crucial week in its four-year struggle for a global free trade pact but the signs are that another key deadline will be missed, diplomats say.

Trade ministers from the 149-state body set themselves the goal of a draft accord in farm and industrial goods, two of the stickiest areas of the negotiations, by the end of April to clear the way for a full trade pact in the summer.

But as negotiators gathered in Geneva for a round of talks beginning on Tuesday, the last before any end-month ministerial meeting, diplomats said the gap between developed and developing countries remained too wide.

The WTO negotiations were launched in 2001 with the aim of boosting the world economy and lifting millions out of poverty. They were initially due to finish at the end of 2004.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has told member states that he will call a meeting of key countries on Friday to decide whether ministers should still come to Geneva at the end of April, or in the first week of May, to try for a deal on farm and manufacturing goods.

"For the time being, we still have a ministerial (meeting); Lamy has not signalled otherwise. But the question is whether we are in a position for a productive meeting," said a trade ambassador from a leading developed country.

While some meeting might take place, few if any Geneva diplomats still believe that it can achieve what it was initially intended to do - agree a blueprint for trade in farm and manufacturing goods, including all the numbers for lowering tariffs and slashing rich state agricultural subsidies.

"It is increasingly obvious that we are in no shape to aim for full modalities at the end of April," said the ambassador of a leading developing nation, using the WTO term for a deal.

This ambassador even questioned whether it was worth ministers coming to Geneva to try to reach a limited accord on key elements, such as the formulas for tariff cuts.

Even if this were possible and the positions are still far apart, many developing countries would not commit themselves to a partial pact that left many of their main concerns for later.

These concerns include the margin for manoeuvring they will get to continue protecting their poor farmers and industries.

"You cannot say - let's settle this and then we can have further negotiations on that. It is all related," he said.

Lamy has said repeatedly that the United States must concede more on farm subsidies, the European Union accept lower farm tariffs and better-off developing countries must offer more cuts in industrial tariffs.

But all three say that they have already made big concessions and that it is up to the others to move first.

"We have already made many moves and there is no reason to do more without being sure that others are going to move on agriculture," Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Brazilian magazine Valor late last week.

Wrapping up the negotiations on agriculture, where developing countries have most to gain, and on industrial goods would have left the WTO with three months to resolve other tricky issues, including market-opening in services, rule changes and measures to help the poorest states trade more.

July is widely seen as the real deadline for a deal because after that there will not be enough time to conclude all the details before US presidential powers to negotiate trade pacts expire in 2007, and they are unlikely to be renewed.

But while diplomats are pessimistic about the chances of a breakthrough in April, they say that there has been some progress since ministers last met in Hong Kong before Christmas.

In agriculture, they point to texts put forward by the chairman of the negotiating group, New Zealand's ambassador Crawford Falconer, indicating some areas of convergence.

"While it is not possible to do this deal by the end of April, yet we see the larger picture emerging. Some time before the summer, there is a possibility it might fall into place," said Indian ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia.