The Dallas Morning News | By Ricardo Sandoval and Alfredo Corchado | September 14, 2003
CANCUN, Mexico _ Polarized trading blocs wasted little time Saturday in branding a proposed declaration from the World Trade Organization as a gift to the United States and Europe that does nothing for struggling farmers in developing nations.
Some delegates inside the Cancun Convention Center on Mexico's Caribbean coast seemed as angry at the WTO process as the 2,000 anti-global trade demonstrators outside _ who dismantled barriers and burned an effigy of the trade organization. Despite minor skirmishes, Mexican police allowed an international mix of protesters to march and chant under an intense tropical sun.
Inside, American officials said they saw some progress in the report.
"The U.S. came to Cancun with commitment and ambition," said U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, adding that he hoped the draft would help move the process forward.
"There are positive elements, and there are other elements we will work to improve and clarify,"
The draft differed little from an earlier version that laid out the desire of the 148 member nations for a timely elimination of export subsidies for crops from big nations, the scaling back of direct crop support payments to farmers and the dropping of import tariffs worldwide.
But the draft did suggest starting the subsidy elimination process with only a few sensitive crops, and proposed negotiations for dissolving subsidies on others. There were no specifics. Those details, WTO delegates said, will be worked out in talks among negotiators at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Negotiators returned to private bargaining tables Saturday night to see if they could hammer out a final declaration before Sunday's closing ceremony.
Brazilian officials stopped short of calling the draft statement a flop, although Foreign Minister Celso Amorin told reporters it was "not satisfactory."
Brazil leads a bloc of developing nations demanding that they be allowed to maintain import tariffs so that their farmers can prepare for open competition with well-heeled American and European growers. Simultaneously, they argue that the United States and Europe ought to quickly lower subsidies and stop dumping crops on international markets at prices below the cost of production.
Amorin said the draft statement did not close the door to further talks that might lead to a favorable subsidies deal.
The WTO draft was written by a small group of so-called facilitators who spent the last week meeting privately with delegates to sort out positions, looking for openings for compromise and issues on which various countries would not yield.
Yet the draft report does little to end suspicion among many nations that "the interests of family farmers and consumers are not being represented by the U.S. government this week in Cancun," said Katherine Ozer, executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition.
"(U.S. trade officials) are exclusively promoting the interests of corporate agribusiness, which still views low commodity prices and export-dependent farm policy as the best direction for U.S. farmers," she said.
Despite that pessimism, at least one American politician, Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, said he wanted to leave a strong message for critics in Cancun, who believe the United States wants to preserve crop supports for farmers. He said the United States is ready to phase out billions of dollars in direct supports to farmers, unlike European growers.
"The U.S. position is, on domestic supports, that we are prepared to eliminate all of ours. Make that clear, all of ours," said Stenholm, ranking Democrat on the House Agricultural Committee.
The Cancun meeting was meant to advance the current round of talks on global trade rules for nations signed on to the eight-year-old group, by setting an agenda for finishing the talks by the end of next year. This round, which started in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, is aimed at setting rules to speed development and rewriting trade guidelines for food and medicine.
Before the meeting, WTO officials had said an accord had been reached on allowing imports of generic versions of vital medicines by poor nations. By Saturday, however, that deal also seemed imperiled because of a dispute between U.S. and European negotiators over the U.S. insistence on protecting pharmaceutical company patents by restricting generic medicines to countries incapable of making their own drugs.
WTO officials were relieved that a promised massive protest march aimed at stopping their work never materialized.
Protesters gathered several miles from the WTO site, on the outskirts of Cancun's tony hotel district to make one last stand.
The crowd's festive mood turned somber with a moment of silence in honor of Kyung Hae Lee, the Korean farmer who committed suicide earlier in the week while protesting policies of the WTO.
"Lee, Lee, Lee," some chanted, while others wrote on power poles, "Lee is present."
But with thousands of helmeted police officers on guard _ some carrying gas canisters _
leaders of the anti-globalization movement appealed for calm.
Some marchers took out their anger on police barricades, tearing down fences in what they called a moral victory. They also torched a crude effigy of a puppet symbolizing the WTO.
Still, the march was peaceful and smaller than what police had anticipated. Despite a number of ardent enemies of trade looking for a fight, others came to party.
As the so-called Noise Brigade from Seattle snaked through a crowd of young and old and jammed _ to drums, trumpets and two women singing from bullhorns _ Juventino Ezid, 28, danced, hoisting a bottle of beer.
Ezid said he was celebrating Mexico's Independence Day, although that party does not begin until Monday.The Dallas Morning News:
