Agence France Presse | By DEBORAH HAYNES | January 23, 2004
How best to re-launch global trade talks is set to be the burning question for more than 20 trade or economics ministers due to meet Friday on the fringe of the elite World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
There is a growing sense of urgency among the World Trade Organisation's 146 member states to make up for lost time following the collapse of a meeting in Cancun, Mexico last September amid divisions between rich and poor countries.
Friday's gathering in the Swiss ski resort of Davos comes on the back of high-level talks in Bangladesh at the weekend, where the European Union's chief WTO negotiator Pascal Lamy said the round should restart after March or April.
Efforts to reduce world trade barriers, launched in November 2001 in the Qatari capital Doha, have ground to a near-halt since the Cancun session.
At the meeting, bickering over cross-border investment and competition added to a more fundamental dispute over farm subsidies in richer countries and the high tariffs on agricultural exports from poorer nations.
Since September, WTO director general Supachai Panitchpakdi has held talks with individual countries to try to negotiate a way forward.
"I certainly would like to get the sense of urgency from the ministers," Supachai told a debate at the World Economic Forum, which is the main event attracting ministers to Davos this week.
"I would like to get a sense of a time-line," he said.
Despite concerns that a US presidential election in November will overshadow the process, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick wrote a letter to his WTO counterparts earlier this month proposing the complete elimination of subsidies on agriculture exports by a set date -- one of the sticking points in Mexico.
Supachai responded to this suggestion in a newspaper interview by saying this "indicates a serious proposal by the US."
Zoellick "wants to have modalities (detailed frameworks) by the middle of the year and a minister conference by the end of the year," the WTO chief told the Wall Street Journal this week.
"Agriculture remains the key" to achieve an agreement and this point "will decide how fast we can move," Supachai said.
But the United States and European Union would not be represented at a ministerial level in Davos, said Manuel Sager, a spokesman for Switzerland's economics ministry, which organised the event.
And he was tight-lipped about who was actually on the guest list.
"The registrations are coming in and then there are cancellations so it is somewhat in flux," Sager told AFP.
"It is between 20 and 24 countries that will be represented," he said.
Last week, Canada's ambassador to the WTO Sergio Marchi -- who will be there with his country's new trade minister -- said although Lamy and Zoellick were not expected, ministers from countries such as Norway, Australia and Malaysia were scheduled to attend.
Marchi described the meeting as "a very valuable and timely opportunity at the beginning of this year... to take stock of where we have been and where we are."
The ambassador added that it would also help to build "political momentum and political resolve to ensure that we create some movement this year and pick up the pace somewhat."Agence France Presse:
