Inside US Trade May 11, 2001
World Trade Organization General Council Chairman Stuart Harbinson has begun a process of informal consultations on the WTO's preparations for the fourth ministerial in November, which will include possible subjects for future negotiations, according to Geneva sources. But the consultations are being undertaken with the understanding that not all members back the launch of new negotiations at the Qatar ministerial.
To drive home that point, several developing countries including Pakistan and India insisted in a May 3 General Council meeting that the consultations not focus on new issues for negotiations to the detriment of other issues. Some industrialized countries like Japan had advocated focusing consultations on "other elements" of the WTO agenda that covers potential new negotiating subjects along with a category calling for political statements on relevant issues.
But in the end, countries agreed at the May 3 session that the preparation consultations will focus on four main areas that had been outlined by Harbinson in a checklist. The four areas are statements the ministers will likely make on current issues such as the challenges facing the trading system; the implementation of existing trade agreements; ongoing negotiations on agriculture and services; and topics for possible negotiations in the future.
Harbinson has emphasized that the four categories are not an outline for a ministerial declaration and do not prejudge a country's position on any future WTO work program or new negotiations. Instead, Harbinson proposed this "initial checklist of possible issues" as a way of focusing the discussions on preparing the Qatar ministerial. It also includes a point on technical cooperation and capacity building and the organization and management of the WTO's work program.
Ultimately, countries will want to channel their discussions of the checklist issues into elements of a possible ministerial declaration, Geneva trade officials said.
These officials said Harbinson will conduct consultations sequentially beginning with members' views on current issues, such as the role of the WTO or the need to fight trade restrictions. He will report the result of this effort in a May 10 General Council session, followed by a May 15 informal session on new subjects for future negotiations raised at the first ministerial of the WTO in Singapore five years ago. These are investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement, and trade facilitation, which are now being examined by WTO working groups and have been championed by various WTO members as subjects for negotiations. He also reserved a bullet point for "other possible subjects," which could cover such issues as industrial tariff cuts.
On May 17, Harbinson will report to the informal General Council session on implementation, which will cover developing countries' demands that existing trade agreements be implemented in a way that gives them more benefits. This will be followed by a report to the May 18 General Council session regarding on-going negotiations and reviews of trade agreements.
At this point, the preparations will not involve officials from the WTO secretariat, keeping the effort member-driven, officials said. Harbinson had floated the notion of having WTO deputy directors involved, but has been persuaded not to do press that idea now given that some developing countries already have the perception that Director General Mike Moore is pushing for a new round, one diplomat said.
The May 3 General Council session did not discuss the four categories in detail and made no decisions on what should or should not be covered in them, sources said. But the U.S. proposed as a possible element to be covered in the preparation process improving transparency of the WTO towards civil society groups. India proposed including the issue of how the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights relates to countries' efforts to fight diseases, sources said. India proposed considering this issue either in the category of ministers' views or as another element for a work program, they said.
Harbinson's checklist does not identify detailed subpoints on implementation, or on the on-going negotiations or reviews of trade agreements. The most subpoints are in the first category, which covers ministers' views/statements on such varied topics as the state of the world economy and the role of the WTO, the relationship between regionalism and multilateralism, and sustainable development.
The inclusion of the implementation demands in the preparations for Qatar came at the insistence of developing countries, particularly Pakistan after industrialized countries, including Japan, pushed for the focus to be on the new elements category. In the Japanese view, implementation is already being addressed separately and the on-going agriculture and services negotiations are also proceeding and do not need to be addressed. Therefore, Japan believes, the Qatar preparations could focus more on topics for new negotiations, sources said.
But countries interested in implementation and those interested in negotiating agricultural reform want to use the Qatar preparation process to get an indication of trading partners' political will to tackle these issues. So far, industrialized countries have been cool to the demands of the developing world for better implementation of trade agreements, and the on-going agricultural talks have been focused on the technical examination of various proposals for reforms. Inclusion in the Qatar preparation process allows a broader perspective, and a way to debate controversial issues, such as the scope of the negotiating mandate for agriculture, officials said.
In addition, including implementation in the preparations for Qatar is a way for developing countries to demonstrate that they will use every opportunity to bring up the issue, one Geneva diplomat said.
The insistence that implementation must be part of the Qatar preparation is a reversal of the position articulated by developing countries, including India and Pakistan, in an April 27 General Council on implementation. In that meeting, they argued that the implementation issue was on a separate track from Qatar preparations (Inside U.S. Trade, May 4, p. 1).
Some countries, including Uruguay, highlighted the need to develop an alternative plan for the Qatar ministerial if it becomes apparent that a new round of negotiations does not have sufficient support, officials said. Pakistan countered that argument by saying that one country's "plan B" of not having a new round could easily be another WTO member's top preference or "plan A," they said.:
