AP Worldstream
PARIS Trade Minister Francois Huwart said Wednesday that France refuses to accept that subsidies for agricultural exports be wiped away at trade talks this week.
France also will seek a "clarification" of conditions of access to medicines in developing nations, Huwart told lawmakers, listing several of Paris' concerns. The World Trade Organization's five days of talks start Friday in Doha, Qatar, the first meeting since talks collapsed amid riots in Seattle, Washington in 1999.
The meeting is aimed at agreeing on an agenda for a new round of global trade negotiations.
Huwart spoke after President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and ministers involved in the talks met to define the official French position.
Huwart said there were a "certain number of insufficiencies and difficulties" in the text to be studied in Doha.
The minister said that France also wants the environment and the social dimension of globalization- issues at the heart of the mayhem in Seattle - to be better taken into account in trade negotiations.
"We don't want the rhythm of the evolution of the (EU) Common Agricultural Policy to be pre-empted in Doha," he said, referring to the complex European Union policy for farm subsidies.
Despite the concerns, Paris has "neither a strategy of failure nor a strategy of renouncement," the minister said. It is simply maintaining what he said was France's "constant position" in dealing with international institutions: "promoting regulation.":
