Agence France Presse
PARIS, June 25 (AFP) - Trade ministers from almost 30 industrial countries will discuss prospects for further world trade liberalisation here this week, their first meeting since failing to launch a new trade round in November.
US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy will be among ministers in Paris for the 29-member Organisation for Economic and Development's annual meeting on Monday and Tuesday, along with World Trade Organisation director general Mike Moore.
Barshefsky and Lamy were key players in the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle, Washington in November which failed to reach agreement on launching a new round of global free trade talks.
"The United States considers it important for (OECD) members to express support for launching a new round (of global trade talks) as soon as possible," US ambassador to the OECD, Amy Bondurant, told reporters ahead of the talks.
Officials are insisting that the OECD meeting is not a negotiating forum, but the ministers will devote part of their two-day meeting to trade issues and that is enough to ensure that anti-WTO protesters, who managed to shut down the Seattle meeting at one point, will also be making their presence felt here.
The fact that the OECD is not a negotiating body -- that is the WTO's role, can be an advantage, offering a more relaxed atmosphere for discussion that can provide "momentum" for future talks, Bondurant said.
Asked what progress the OECD could make on the issue, given that developing countries, key players in the WTO talks, are not OECD members, OECD secretary Donald Johnston noted that one problem at Seattle was the "enormous differences of views within the OECD."
And Washington is hoping that the final communique from the OECD talks will include a "strong statement" supporting a new round and pledging to ensure that developing countries reap the full benefit of further global trade liberalisation, she said.
OECD deputy secretary general Herwig Schloegl told reporters that the OECD ministers could "successfully prepare the ground for the launch of a new round as soon as possible."
Such comments may help explain why anti-globalisation groups are planning to demonstrate outside a two-day forum being organised by the OECD alongside the ministerial, on the challenges of an "increasingly global, knowledge-based economy," which is to be addressed by Moore.
The Seattle talks foundered on disagreements over agriculture between the United States and EU, as well as insistence from the developing world that it play a full role in crafting the framework for a new round.
Whatever happens this week, there seems little chance of an imminent launch of a new global trade round.
Moore said Thursday that there had been some movement since Seattle, "but not enough for me to say with confidence in the short term that we can get going rapidly," while Schloegl said that a new launch was unlikely before next year.
"The issue the OECD ministers have to address... is the benefits of a new round for developing countries and non-OECD members," Johnston said.
On this at least the OECD seems to be in agreement with the protesters.
"It is an anachronism that a club of 29 rich countries continues to decide the world economic picture, excluding developing countries from the negotiations," said the CCOCDE, a committee coordinating opposition to the OECD meeting.
The Seattle meeting is perhaps best remembered for a battle that brought tens of thousands of anti-globalisation protesters to the Seattle streets, shutting down the conference at one point and leaving the US coastal city under curfew for several days.
This week's OECD meeting is unlikely to be free of demonstrations -- street protests, and an attempt to overload the OECD's computer system, marred an OECD meeting on small and medium businesses in Bologna, Italy last week.
"There will be demonstrations, that's fine, we are living in an open society," Schloegl said.
"The criterion for us is no violence in the street.":
