Rueters | By Gilbert Le Gras | July 28, 2003
Top trade officials from the United States, European Union and two dozen other countries launched new efforts to kick start stalled world trade talks on Monday, searching for common ground on farm subsidies and tariff reforms.
"While we need to be worried about the timeline, I hope it doesn't stampede us into diluting ambitions and slapping a deal together when we know we could have held out for something bigger and better," Canada's WTO ambassador Sergio Marchi told Reuters outside a meeting between nongovernmental organizations and WTO Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi.
The meeting is the first chance for the trade ministers to explore how European farm policy reforms could affect the World Trade Organization talks, which have made little progress since they were launched 20 months ago in Doha, Qatar.
Countries need to agree on the broad outlines of an agricultural deal at the WTO's mid-session review in Cancun, Mexico, this September to have any chance of finishing the negotiations by the goal of January 2005.
However, there are still wide differences in what trade negotiators call the "three pillars" of the agricultural talks -- domestic supports, export subsidies and tariffs.
WTO agriculture committee chairman Stuart Harbinson has proposed rich countries cut their most trade-distorting domestic subsidies -- a category known as amber box payments -- by 60 percent over five years. He has also proposed a 50-percent cut in blue box payments, a category of less trade-distorting subsidies used primarily by the EU.
EU officials are optimistic they can meet both of those goals. But U.S. farm groups say the Harbinson proposal is unfair because it would still allow the EU to spend much more than the United States.
Washington wants to eliminate that huge disparity and also is pressing for deeper agricultural tariff cuts than Harbinson has proposed. Meanwhile, the EU is resisting Harbinson's plan for eliminating export subsidies over nine years.
The meeting, scheduled to last for three days, takes place against the backdrop of anti-globalization protests, and Montreal police arrested 10 people on Monday after an estimated crowd of about 500 hurled projectiles and broke shop windows.
Riot police dispersed the crowd and cordoned off several streets around the hotel hosting the meeting as a security precaution.Rueters:
