WTO MEMBERS TO BEGIN INFORMAL TALKS FOR QATAR MINISTERIAL _______________________________________________ Date: March 9, 2001 - Inside US Trade -
World Trade Organization members this week agreed on an informal consultation process under the aegis of the General Council to explore a possible consensus for the launch of a new negotiating round at November's Ministerial meeting. With countries continuing to show differences on the scope and even necessity of such a round, the process is linked to progress on developing countries' demands to implement existing agreements in a way that benefits them and to progress in ongoing talks on services and agriculture.
The preparatory process for the November ministerial, which was launched at an Informal General Council meeting yesterday (March 8), is designed to avoid the problems that plagued the run-up to the failed Seattle Ministerial in 1999. Countries will try to avoid the early tabling of proposed text for a declaration-- and the consequent hardening of positions-- unless there is substantial movement towards consensus, Geneva sources said.
The preparatory work takes as its starting point the May 1998 Ministerial Declaration, which makes general reference to the topics to be addressed in the preparation for the ultimately failed attempt to launch a negotiating round in Seattle the following year. This time, countries want to avoid the mistakes of the Seattle preparation by having a more open and transparent process, by developing general consensus before bringing forth declaration texts and by avoiding having a text that seeks to pre-negotiate the end result of the negotiations on a given topic.
Under this process, the initial role of the WTO Secretariat and WTO Director General Mike Moore would be limited to focusing attention in capitals and among Geneva delegations about the need for a round, officials said. But there will be no effort by the Secretariat to try to forge consensus at this point because that would inevitably mean taking sides on contentious issues, they said. An "open-ended, inclusive and transparent process" would be conducted under the General Council, currently chaired by Hong Kong's WTO Representative Stuart Harbinson, in an effort to make the process more "member driven."
These consultations on the ministerial would proceed in parallel to talks on developing countries' implementation demands, which involve efforts to have existing agreements clarified or implemented in a way that gives these countries greater benefits. Developing countries insist on substantive concessions by developed countries on this agenda by July in order to proceed further towards a new round, trade officials said.
" On a separate, parallel track, there will have to be concessions by July or so if you want active or constructive engagement for Qatar," one official said.
A third parallel track in the WTO consists of the ongoing negotiations on services and agriculture, which could also accelerate in the summer if there is progress toward accepting a wider round of negotiations, as the European Union and Japan have demanded. Agriculture is also linked to the agenda for a new round, because some of the Cairns countries are trying to match the level of ambition in the agricultural talks with the level of ambition in a larger round.
If the EU and Japan insisted on a very ambitious agenda overall, these countries would want an ambitious goal for agricultural negotiations. If there is a movement towards broadening the round, officials said, there will be a push to deepen the mandate to make agricultural liberalization goals more specific than they are now, an official said.
Signals in the agriculture negotiating session that countries want to backtrack on agricultural liberalization from the Uruguay Round could lead to a hardening of positions in preparing for the ministerial.
"It's a rather delicate process, moving forward in a parallel way on a range of issues," one trade official said.
By July members hope to have a sense of what is likely to be on the table for the Qatar Ministerial, not a fully fleshed out text for a Declaration. Countries must have a clear sense of what the agenda is for the Qatar ministerial by July, some officials said. But a senior official said that such a consensus in July could at most be a broad agreement on the need for a round and its scope. If that can be achieved, then work on hammering out a text would proceed after the August break, sources said.
Up until July, small groups, possibly under sub-chairs selected by the Harbinson, would meet to see how the ministerial declaration could address specific topics, such as proposed negotiations on investment rules pushed by the EU. These groups would then report back to periodic meetings of the General Council on their progress, and if other members were concerned about a development, they would provide input in further talks.
But trade officials had different views on how to address stalemates on given topics, with one developing country official saying that only elements that were agreed upon would be included in the Declaration. "When there is something ready for harvesting in the preparatory process, then it gets placed into the ministerial declaration," the official said. "What is cooked goes into the ministerial declaration. What is uncooked, stays out."
Those seeking a broader round, like the EU, believe this approach amounts to settling for nothing more than the built-in agenda on agriculture and services, and note that developing countries' priorities like the implementation agenda would also be left out. The process has to account for trade-offs between the priorities various countries assign to different negotiating subjects, one official said..
Another overriding problem is that a number of developing countries, like Egypt, India, Pakistan, Brazil and Mexico, do not see the necessity to launch a round in Qatar, and argue that the WTO's periodic ministerial meetings should not be tied to the launch of new negotiations.
"A ministerial is not an event to launch a round," one developing country official said. "We are not in favor to have a round. We don't think the time is ripe."
These countries will still participate in the preparatory work, though some officials expressed doubt that there would be sufficient time to adequately prepare the groundwork for a launch of new talks in Qatar.
The quest to have a ministerial declaration that does not prejudge the outcome of negotiations is made more difficult by countries that insist the text must contain some parameters. Some officials caution that a short open-ended statement that puts an area onto the new negotiating agenda will not necessarily be easier to swallow. Developing countries may want parameters set for negotiations on new areas such as investment and competition, so that a simple willingness to negotiate does not lead to a complex and difficult agreement, officials said. One example is the ministerial declaration that launched the Uruguay Round, which mentioned intellectual property rights as a subject for negotiation and then led to the controversial Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, officials said.
On the other hand, the stalemate over implementation leads these developing countries to want assurances that whatever part of their agenda is folded into a new round is not just a subject for further discussion but for positive action.:
