By DAVID THURBER | Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Prospects for a rapid resumption of world trade negotiations weakened Monday with differences between rich and poor nations remaining wide at a U.N. trade conference.
Participants at this week's U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in Bangkok have hoped the meetings would help heal divisions over free trade that caused the collapse of December's trade talks in Seattle.
But instead, a consensus is growing among many developing countries that their needs must be fully included before they are willing to agree to any new trade talks.
UNCTAD promotes trade as a way for poor countries to develop, while the World Trade Organization sets the rules that regulate trade. The UNCTAD meeting is the first major trade conference since the WTO talks in Seattle.
Many Third World countries at the UNCTAD meetings share the view that the WTO has been dominated by developed countries and that current trade agreements are unfair to poor nations.
They complain the WTO has left tariffs high on goods exported by many poor countries, such as textiles and farm products, while allowing rich countries to subsidize agricultural exports.
"Six or seven of the top 10 agricultural exporters are developed countries, and I don't think they could reach that status without export subsidies," said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero.
Harriet C. Babbitt, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the chief U.S. delegate at the Bangkok conference, dismissed prospects that the weeklong session would jump-start the WTO talks. Babbitt said Washington does not view the UNCTAD meeting as an appropriate place to begin such negotiations.
Developed countries are still balking at a proposal by WTO Director-General Mike Moore that they remove all trade barriers for products from the world's 48 poorest countries.
The United States and Japan, among others, are concerned about the damage to their own producers if they open their markets entirely to products such as rice and textiles.
Michael Bailey, senior policy adviser for the charity Oxfam, said Moore's proposal is the most important thing which could come out of the Bangkok meeting.
Because WTO trade agreements have focused on the products produced by industrialized countries, "a large number of developing countries ... are yet to find any meaningful market access opportunities for products of export interest to them," said Sri Lankan commerce minister Kingsley Wickramaraine.
Officials from poor countries also complain that rich nations have failed to live up to pledges to grant preferential access to goods from poor countries.
Such inequalities must be removed before any new trade talks are launched, said Martin Khor, head of the Malaysia-based Third World Network.
Data released by UNCTAD show the world's 48 poorest nations -- of which 33 are in Africa -- are failing to benefit from free trade and globalization and instead face worsening poverty.
"The phenomenal increases in global trade, investment and financial flows have largely bypassed Africa," said K.Y. Amoako, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa.
Instead of resembling a no-holds-barred boxing match, the world trading system should be modeled after a golf tournament, with handicaps granted to each participant in relation to his ability, said Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon.
Unlike the street protests at the WTO talks in December, there has been no violence and only the mildest of confrontations with police during the Bangkok meetings.
With a typically gracious Thai touch, 200 protesters denouncing the effects of power projects on Thailand's environment handed flowers Monday to U.N. officials and riot police to mark Valentine's Day.
The gesture contrasted with a pie hurled Sunday in the face of retiring International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus by an American activist. Camdessus refused to press charges.By DAVID THURBER:
