By JOSEPH KAHN | New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 With only a week to go before trade ministers are scheduled to gather in Doha, Qatar, to try to set the agenda for a worldwide trade accord, actions the United States has taken since the terrorist attacks appear to have widened the gap between rich and poor nations and persuaded some negotiators that the meeting could become a casualty of war.
The Bush administration's tussle with Bayer A.G. (news/quote) in which Washington forced the company to sharply reduce the price of its anthrax drug Cipro has emboldened developing countries to insist on a broad "public health" exception to international patent rules for other drugs, like those used to keep AIDS victims alive.
India, Nigeria and many others are also arguing that if the United States can cede special trading rights to Pakistan's textile and apparel makers to help a frontline ally, it should ease barriers for clothing makers in all poor countries.
Disputes over patent rules and textile quotas have been around for years. But the exigencies of fighting terrorism have cast the matter into stark relief and set off a heated debate in Geneva, where negotiators for 142 nations in the World Trade Organization had hoped to be narrowing their differences ahead of the meeting.
The 11th-hour standoff has raised the possibility that trade ministers will converge on Qatar only to have the talks collapse, as they did in Seattle two years ago. Such a failure would be especially bitter because many officials say they fear for their safety by convening in the Persian Gulf region even as war rages in Afghanistan.
Still, Bush administration officials expressed confidence that the trade talks would conclude successfully, meaning that ministers would agree to a new, several- year round of negotiations to eliminate barriers and unify rules of global trade.
But the risks are arguably greater than they were in Seattle. The leading industrial nations are experiencing a rare simultaneous economic slump. World trade flows are shrinking for the first time in two decades. A trade agreement has been viewed as vital to opening new markets and spurring business investment.
Moreover, some analysts say the future of the World Trade Organization, formed six years ago to promote trade and resolve disputes with more authority than previously allowed, would be in doubt if its second attempt to advance global trade talks is again stillborn.
Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said this week that liberalizing trade was an urgent priority to avoid giving nations an excuse to revert to protectionism. "The meeting in Doha needs to get the W.T.O. back on track," he said.
Like any trade negotiation, the coming talks depend on resolving a number of disputes under a single umbrella. Removing barriers to trade in farm products is a top American priority while limiting the use of antidumping rules to block low-price imports has become a major concern of Japan and many developing nations. Both matters are proving especially hard to resolve.
At the same time, tensions are rising between rich and poor. Brazil and India are leading a coalition that wants trade rules rewritten to make it clear that nations can violate patents and save money on, for example, AIDS or malaria drugs when they face an acute health crisis.
They argue that poor countries often cannot afford vital medicine. Industrial nations, they say, often seek to punish them if they buy or produce knockoff versions of the drugs.
Paulo Teixeira, director of Brazil's anti-AIDS program, told reporters this week that the United States' efforts to reduce the price of Cipro, under threat of breaking Bayer's patent, mimics similar strong-arm tactics that Brazil has used. Washington threatened at one point to file a W.T.O. case against Brazil on behalf of American drug makers.
"They are doing exactly what we did," Mr. Teixeira said of the Bush administration's position on Cipro. "It is inconsistent to then oppose making that an option on a global level."
But that argument has run into stiff opposition from delegates representing Switzerland, Canada and Japan, as well as the United States, who are fighting hard to preserve protection of intellectual property. The two sides are still far apart.
The Bush administration has proposed a compromise that it says ensures that poor countries could gain access to drugs during emergencies. Mr. Zoellick said he supports giving developing countries more time to come into compliance with intellectual property rules.
But the administration has dug in its heels on amending patent protection. Officials argue that Brazil and India, which both make generic versions of leading drugs, have used the American response to terrorism as an excuse to increase sales.
"They want a huge `get out of jail free' card any time you use the words `public health,' " an American trade official said.
Disputes on textiles have also become more pointed since Sept. 11. Developing countries have been arguing for years that industrial nations, especially the United States, have been unwilling to open their doors to clothing and textile products, which along with farm products are the leading exports of many poor countries.
When the Bush administration last week broached the possibility of reducing tariffs or increasing the quota allocations on Pakistani textiles, the concession to a war ally resonated loudly in Geneva. There, American negotiators have been fighting to preserve the right to shelter the politically powerful domestic textile industry.
Developing countries have been arguing that they will not compromise on other issues until they see more evidence that barriers to the textile trade are being eliminated.
The negotiations, the Nigerian trade delegation said in a statement today, "are empty of contents on the issues of interest to developing countries."By JOSEPH KAHN:
