Inside US Trade | Vol. 19, No. 34 | August 24, 2001
A meeting of trade ministers in Mexico City next month to prepare for the Doha ministerial will cover a broad range of disputed issues related to the launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations, but will not delve into a specific discussion about possible text for a ministerial declaration, trade sources said.
The Aug. 31-Sept. 1 informal ministerial will touch on most of the contentious issues related to a possible agenda for a World Trade Organization round, starting with agriculture and antidumping rules. Also on the agenda are addressing developing countries' implementation demands, trade and environment, and competition and investment policy.
Those issues are also sure to figure in a meeting of European Union trade ministers in Bruges, Belgium, which an EU spokesman confirmed was scheduled for Sept. 7. One diplomat speculated that EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy might use the occasion to gauge member state support for further scaling back EU ambitions for the agenda of the round.
Immediately preceding the Bruges ministers' meeting will be a meeting of the member states' "133 committee," to cover Doha preparations and bilateral trade disputes with the U.S., a source said.
Rounding out the agenda for the Mexico City meeting are trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement. This means that the meeting will cover essentially all issues that have been mentioned in connection with the launch of a new round save industrial tariff negotiations, dispute settlement rules and liberalization of trade in services.
At the request of Brazil, the meeting will also cover trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and health. African countries and Brazil have called for a moratorium on WTO challenges to measures taken to promote access to drugs and protect public health, which has been strongly resisted by the U.S. and European Union (Inside U.S. Trade, July 27, p. 1).
On government procurement, while there is broad agreement that transparency should be one issue addressed in a new round of talks, the European Union has voiced a desire to go further by exploring market access in the sector. This is opposed by developing countries, which say the mandate given by ministers during the Singapore trade talks does not extend beyond transparency issues in government procurement.
The informal meeting in Mexico City was intended to concentrate on "sticking points" and to identify, on a political level, areas where there could be room for flexibility in the positions of members. Trade sources stressed that no formal decisions will be taken, because the talks will only include representatives from selected governments, nor will ministers issue a declaration or statement at these talks.
Nineteen countries were invited to attend the talks, including: Quad members the U.S., EU, Japan, and Canada; like-minded group members India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Egypt; as well as Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Mexico, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania and Uruguay. Ministers from most of these countries, including India and Pakistan, who have opposed the start of multilateral talks in the absence of progress towards implementation demands, are expected to attend.
The Mexico City meeting had originally been planned for the beginning of August, but that date was pushed back in an effort to increase the chances that concrete progress could come from the meeting. But one trade source said a factor in changing the date was to avoid having the meeting overshadow WTO Director General Mike Moore's "reality check" which took place at the end of July.
Overall, sources said there is no evidence that members' positions have shifted at all since that meeting, at which Moore noted a lack of consensus on any of the issues mentioned above, and particularly deep divisions over trade and environment and agriculture (Inside U.S. Trade, Aug. 17, p. 1). But the meeting will allow countries to explore possible tradeoffs and "where the possible landing zones may be," said one Geneva source.
Also, officials at the meeting will likely not go through the particulars of each agenda item, but the discussion will be focused around possible points of compromise, according to these sources.
A U.S. trade official said Aug. 22 that the exercise would serve to "allow ministers from a variety of perspectives to get involved at an early enough stage so that they can hear what the political constraints and needs are of their colleagues, and reflect on that so that we can incorporate those elements in a negotiating agenda."
The official added that he believed that more countries were now waking up to the likelihood of a new round, and were thus getting engaged to make sure their interests are included in that agenda.
According to an Aug. 23 statement from the Mexican trade ministry, "It's necessary in this process to have the direct involvement of the ministers in charge of trade, with the object of giving political direction to the preparations, as well as to be able to have a better idea of the scope of the Ministerial Conference."
So far, developing countries have insisted that more needs to be done on the implementation agenda prior to launching a new round and taking on additional obligations that could result from new negotiations. The only issue that developed countries have substantively addressed at this point is the granting of extensions for countries to bring their trade-related investment measures (TRIMS) into compliance with multilateral rules. However, even that issue is not fully resolved because agreement has not been reached on how much time beyond the initial extension to Jan. 1, 2002 would be granted to each country.
In addition, the U.S. and EU have shown some flexibility regarding exemptions to the general prohibition on export subsidies for least developed countries, according to Geneva sources. Developing countries want that exemption to apply to countries in which GNP per capita dips back down below the $1,000 threshold, even if the GNP was previously above that threshold.
Meanwhile, a group of South Asian countries was expected to draft a common position on the possibility of using the Doha ministerial to launch a new trade round. Ministers of South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) met Aug. 22-23 to discuss issues related to the WTO ministerial.
Members of SAARC include WTO members India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives, as well as Nepal and Bhutan, which are both in the process of trying to accede. These countries were expected to endorse a position, similar to that already expressed by India and Pakistan, of opposition to new negotiations on WTO rules unless developed countries first agreed to address implementation demands.
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