United Press International | November 27, 2001 | By SONIA KOLESNIKOV, UPI Business Correspondent
SINGAPORE - Progress in negotiations on agriculture issues will have to be made before the next World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting, in two years time, if the overall negotiations are to move forward, trade ministers for Singapore and New Zealand said Tuesday.
Earlier this month, the 142-members of the WTO, which will be joined by China and Taiwan in December, agreed to launch a new round of global trade talks aimed at lowering tariffs on a wide range of industrial and agricultural goods and services, clarification of the organization's antidumping rules and the reduction of red tape at customs offices. The trade talks are expected to last until 2005. Singapore Trade Minister George Yeo played a key role in the Doha meeting, when he mediated the thorny agricultural negotiations. As Singapore has no agricultural resources it was viewed as neutral on the issue.
The subsidies for the production and export of agricultural goods, especially those maintained by the European Union, are at the core of the agricultural trade issue.
The final standoff set the European Union against India. The EU (mainly France) was battling to keep at least some of its farm subsidies, arguing they should be reduced, but not eliminated. France is the EU member with the most at stake, facing elections in May and a powerful farm lobby.
India was fighting off the joint European-American effort for the new round of talks to include investment, competition and environmental issues.
In the final hours, India won crucial developing world support and secured a promise that a further vote on these issues (with the opportunity for an Indian veto) would be taken at the next ministerial conference in two years time.
Meanwhile, the Europeans obtained a compromise in the final declaration, which stated that farm talks would be established "without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations."
Yeo pointed that the next ministerial meeting will be important as nations postponed decisions about negotiations on investment and competition.
"By that time, there must be sufficient progress on agriculture in order to give an incentive to many developing countries to come along on investment and competition," Yeo added.
"The nature of negotiations is that nothing is settled until everything is settled, but there should be some movement in agriculture before there can be movement in other areas," New Zealand Trade Minister Jim Sutton said.
"We're under no illusion that concluding the developing agenda will not be easy. Launching it was difficult enough, concluding it could be even more difficult," Yeo added.
The Uruguay Round, the last set of negotiations signed in 1994, produced more than 550 pages of legal texts, all negotiated line by line. This new round will cover more subjects and include more countries at the negotiating table.
The WTO Agriculture Committee is slated to meet Dec. 3-7 in Geneva. The official new round of talks will start in January.
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