The United States applauded the effort that a group of developing countries was making to ease the deadlock in world farm trade talks.
A proposal by the G20 alliance at the World Trade Organization - led by India, South Africa and Brazil - puts the onus on rich countries to cut agricultural tariffs while asking relatively little of poorer countries.
"I think the G20 is seriously engaged in trying to flesh this out," Allen Johnson, the chief U.S. agricultural negotiator, told reporters Friday. "I think the other delegations are trying to flesh out the details of market access too, so from our perspective we were pleased to hear that."
Johnson was optimistic that the current round of talks would reach a successful conclusion, adding that "there's an attempt here on the part of everyone participating to address these trade distorting practices."
Meanwhile, Carlo Trojan, the European Union ambassador to the Geneva-based WTO, told reporters Thursday the G-20 plan is a "constructive approach to help us narrow the issues" and added that there is an emerging consensus at the talks, although some differences remain.
"I think that most parties, including ourselves, have welcomed the (G20) paper," he said. "It was a constructive approach to help us clarify the issues and to try to narrow the different positions between parties."
The delegations have gone through the proposal in "very frank and open discussions, and generally the sentiment was that it has been helpful in crystallizing the issues," Trojan added.
Arancha Gonzalez, the spokeswoman for EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, said last week it was good to see the developing nations had put forward a proposal. But she said it lacked details, in particular on how developed nations should achieve tariff cuts.
Negotiators hope to be able to draft a text for a WTO trade accord at the end of this round of talks in late July.
"It's an ongoing dialogue now," Johnson noted. "It's safe to say the members of WTO will be in almost constant contact."
Trade in farm products is central to the success of overall trade liberalization talks within the WTO. It is hoped the current round of trade talks can be completed by the end of 2004.
Global trade relations were chilled by the collapse last September of the 147-member organization's last formal ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
But they began to thaw last month at an informal meeting in Paris, after the EU agreed in principle to scrap export subsidies on farm produce - blamed for hurting producers in poor countries - and dropped controversial demands for new global rules on investment, competition and government procurement.
The United States has already signaled readiness to scrap its own much smaller export subsidies and trade-distorting export credits, but both Washington and Brussels have stressed that the concessions are conditional on poorer countries agreeing to open their own markets.Associated Press:
