Agence France Presse | By Stefanie Batcho | July 30,
2003Trade ministers from 25 countries meeting behind closed doors here in an attempt to give momentum to stalled global trade talks started positioning themselves Tuesday for a showdown over agricultural subsidies.
The three days of informal World Trade Organization talks here, which will conclude Wednesday, come just ahead of a September WTO summit in Cancun, where progress of the latest round of free trade talks will be measured.
So far, the Doha Round of talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, has advanced little, with none of the deadlines fixed for negotiation modalities respected.
The talks at a barricaded downtown Montreal hotel are aimed at giving a major thrust to find consensus on the divisive trade issues of farm subsidies and medicine for poor countries that could breathe new life into the free trade talks.
Ministers and WTO officials were meeting Tuesday to try to hammer out how to progressively reduce agricultural export subsidies and decide on how to provide access for developing countries' products to enter rich nations' markets.
But all eyes were on whether the European Union and the United States would take further steps to reduce their respective agricultural subsidies -- seen as crucial to moving the global trade talks forward.
"There were new elements introduced, some new approaches put forward for greater flexibility for developing countries, but some countries -- like the US, EU and Japan -- think there needs to be a higher level of ambition with respect to the tariff cuts (then the current negotiating text)," said one WTO official, speaking on background.
"The developing country point of view is that they need to be very selective in where they can bring down these barriers.
"They need to protect industries that are in their infancy to give them a period of time to adjust to global competition, so that's the central debate at the moment," the official said.
A European Union official, meanwhile, said that the EU proposed to cut its domestic subsidies by 60 percent as part of its recently reformed Common Agricultural Policy.
"We are ready to show that we are determined to reduce our subsidies, like the WTO asked of us," the EU official said.
The WTO official said the objective of the talks -- the third so-called mini-ministerial this year -- "is to introduce new elements ... around which convergence could be built or at least around which the debate could begin to formulate" to get countries off of their fixed positions ahead of Cancun.
Earlier Tuesday, international farm leaders from 30 countries pressed the trade ministers here to ensure any trade accords preserve some protections to sustain and improve local farmers' livelihoods.
"The subsidy issue is a very critical issue in tariff negotiations," said Raul Montemayor, a manager with the Philippines' Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives.
"While we understand that developed countries may require the subsidies to preserve and support their own agriculture, we are also telling them that they should subsidize their farmers but not at the expense of farmers in developing countries.
"And to the extent the subsidies start hurting farmers in developing countries, our farmers should be able to protect themselves through tariffs and other forms of trade remedies," he told AFP.
As the ministers met inside the Montreal hotel, outside a few hundred protesters -- including some wearing bandanas wrapped around their faces -- took to the streets in another march Tuesday aimed at disrupting the talks, but it was mostly peaceful.
Monday, 238 people were arrested after an early morning protest turned violent, with outlets of two symbols of US business -- Gap and Burger King -- targeted, and some luxury vehicles vandalized.Agence France Presse:
