BRASILIA, Feb 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley said on Monday the United States is not trying to impose labor and environmental standards on the developing world, but those concerns need to be addressed in trade talks.
Speaking to a small group of journalists during a visit to Brazil, Daley said citizens the world over were concerned about these issues and they must therefore be discussed.
President Bill Clinton appeared to want to put child labor rights on the agenda at failed world trade talks at the end of 1999 in a move that irritated Brazil's government.
Brazil and many other developing nations have subsequently voiced concerns that labor issues could become just another excuse for protectionist barriers by wealthy industrial nations to exports from the developing world. Brazilian politicians suggested the U.S. was bowing to pressures from rioters in Seattle to put these issues on the agenda.
"The president (Clinton) was not insisting on labor standards, he was insisting that labor and environmental issues need to be discussed as we go forward in the WTO (World Trade Organization)," Daley said.
"He was not saying here is a standard, but the fact of the matter is that labor and the environment do impact these trade agreements, they are issues that citizens all over the world are concerned about."
Daley emphatically denied the United States was responsible for the failure of the Seattle talks because of a push to include labor rights and environmental standards in the talks.
"The president's comments, in my opinion, are great fodder for great excuses for those who didn't move in Seattle," he said. "They are looking for scapegoats for why there was no progress."
He said failure of the talks in Seattle was a virtual foregone conclusion because endless talks in Geneva between world trade delegates before the actual meeting bore no fruit.
"It was pretty obvious that the likelihood of a trade deal being reached, with or without rioters down the street, was pretty slim," he said.:
