By: CLARE NULLIS | Associated Press Writer
GENEVA: Brushing aside security worries, the head of the World Trade Organization said Friday that the forthcoming ministerial conference in Qatar would be a vital confidence booster for a gloomy global economy. But he cautioned that success was far from guaranteed.
"I'm going to Doha. Our team is going to Doha," declared WTO Director-General Mike Moore in a bid to quash continuing rumors that the meeting might be scrapped at the last minute because of fears of a terrorist attack in the Gulf state. "This will be an enormously important conference."
Moore confirmed that there were contingency plans for WTO staff in the event of any trouble, but declined to give details and repeatedly stressed that he had confidence in the local organizers.
Security worries have caused many countries, business lobbies and non-governmental groups to reduce their representation. The U.S. delegation has been scaled down, and members have been briefed about receiving emergency gear, including a gas mask, medicine and two-way radios for use in case of evacuation to offshore ships in event of an attack from terrorist cells operating in Qatar.
Moore said that despite the additional headaches, the continuing fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States made it even more important for the Doha conference to succeed in launching a new round of trade talks to cut barriers to trade.
"The global downturn is focussing minds on the fact that jobs have been shed everywhere. There's not a minister of finance, a mayor or governor of a province anywhere that is not facing declining revenues," the New Zealander said.
"I tend to respect the view of Mr. Greenspan and others who say this would boost confidence. I tend to respect the view of Kofi Annan and others who say this would assist developing countries," Moore said in reference to the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman and U.N. secretary-general.
But he conceded that ministers from the WTO's 142 member countries faced some "very, very difficult decisions and tradeoffs," just as they did at a 1999 meeting in Seattle which ended in collapse.
"There is no consensus anywhere on any issue," he said.
A potential deal-breaker is patents and medicines which are covered by the WTO's agreement on intellectual property known as TRIPS.
Developing countries led by Brazil - which has a highly successful anti-AIDS program based on universal access to cheap generic drugs - want a ministerial declaration to include the wording: "Nothing in the TRIPS Agreement shall prevent members from taking measures to protect public health."
This is rejected by the United States and Switzerland - both major pharmaceutical producers - who say patents are vital as an incentive to develop new medicines for incurable diseases.
"Agriculture is still, as always, an issue of enormous and substantial difficulty," said Moore. The seemingly intractable dispute between the European Union and Japan - who want subsidies to protect their farmers - and more efficient producers like Australia, Canada and the United States helped derail the Seattle meeting.
Moore said that the issue of reconciling environmental and free trade interests was "even more difficult" than two years ago.
Moving as he described into "autopilot," Moore then listed other tricky areas including implementation of existing promises to reduce import quotas and tariffs and investment and competition. Labor standards - which caused huge rows at Seattle - have been dropped from the agenda this time around.
Moore tried to allay fears of the poor that too little is being done for them. He cited a World Bank study that if rich countries abolished subsidies to their own industries, the benefits to developing countries would wipe out their foreign debt eight times over.
If the conference ended in collapse, it would likely encourage countries to seek solace in bilateral or regional trade deals rather than truly global ones. This over time would penalize smaller countries, Moore warned.
"I always think that we can do the best for the most under our leaky, imperfect WTO umbrella," he said.By: CLARE NULLIS:
