Agence France Presse | November 7, 2001 | BYLINE: DAVID WILLIAMS
DOHA - Negotiators from 142 countries risk sending a dangerous signal of division if they fail yet again to launch a global trade round, World Trade Organization head Mike Moore warned in a statement obtained here Wednesday.
Evoking the spectre of another flop following the 1999 debacle in Seattle, he said the WTO itself could be sidelined if the November 9-13 meeting in the sultry Qatari capital Doha is unable to start worldwide talks to lower trade barriers.
"It is no exaggeration to say that what ministers decide here in the next few days will determine whether the World Trade Organization remains at the centre of trade policy concerns over the next few years," Moore said in a letter to journalists due to be released Thursday. "Others have said that if the WTO fails to embark on an ambitious work programme here in Doha that the organization will be consigned to hibernation or become irrelevant," he added.
"I don't agree with that."
If the WTO proves unable to launch a new round, repeating the December 1999 setback in Seattle when a similar attempt collapsed amid internal division and massive protests, the organization would nonetheless remain an important arbiter of trade rows and a provider of technical help and training, Moore said.
"But I believe it is true that the trade focus in many nations will shift away from Geneva if we fall short of success in Doha," the WTO director general said.
Policymakers would switch to making regional or one-to-one trade deals if the Doha meeting flopped, Moore warned. Such deals were important but no substitute for truly international agreements.
"At a time when global cooperation is as important as it has ever been a failure to improve one of the most important pillars of the international architecture would be not only unfortunate but dangerous," he added.
"Apart from the need to strengthen the system and the organisation, there is the obvious need to send signals of confidence to a world in which the largest economies all face the prospect of recession."
If the European, Japanese and US economies fell into a simultaneous recession, their first since 1975, it would cut imports from and investment in developing countries, he warned.
Moore said he had faced criticism for trying to launch a new round of negotiations in Doha.
Developing countries were expecting better from the WTO after complaining of disappointingly meagre fare despite the lavish promises of the 1986-1994 round of trade negotiations, he noted.
"But does anyone seriously believe that we will get substantial changes to our rules on agriculture, textiles or trade remedies through any avenue other than negotiations?"
The WTO boss admitted failings, saying the organisation should do more to open markets and give technical assistance to poor countries and to preserve the environment.
Negotiators also needed to fix a global agricultural system under which rich countries spend a billion dollars a day on subsidies that are often "wasteful and trade distorting".
Cutting the subsidies and paring back barriers to imports from developing countries would be worth three times the total sum of official development assistance provided by rich countries, he said.
"I have no illusions as to the challenge ahead," Moore said.
"Finding a satisfactory compromise on issues like implementation, patentability of essential medicines, agriculture, the environment, investment and competition will not be easy to achieve," he added.
"But find it we must because the price of failure is too high."
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