Reuters | By Alan Wheatley | Sept. 10, 2003
CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) - Deeply divided over the make-or-break issue of farm subsidies, rich and poor countries begin five days of talks on Wednesday aimed at preparing the ground for a deal to tear down barriers to global trade.
Progress at the meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun would be a shot in the arm for the still-fragile world economy.
Stalemate would encourage governments to strike deals with each other, sapping the strength of the multilateral trading system overseen by the World Trade Organization and possibly splitting the world into rival blocs.
"Failure is not an option. It would send a very damaging signal around the world about prospects for economic recovery and would result in more hardship for workers around the globe, particularly in poorer countries," said Supachai Panitchpakdi, a Thai who is the WTO's director-general.
Supachai has the Herculean task of reconciling the conflicting interests of the WTO's 146 members so they can meet a self-imposed deadline of agreeing a new round of market-opening measures by the end of 2004.
At the heart of the negotiations is the vexed issue of agriculture, and two days of preliminary skirmishes showed why the talks have crawled along since they were launched in Doha, the Qatari capital, in November 2001.
Poor countries say rich states must deliver on the promise they made in Doha and slash the $300 billion in subsidies they dole out each year to their farmers -- six times more than they provide in development aid.
Because of these handouts and high tariffs, poor countries say they are not only shut out of rich-country markets but find they are often undercut at home by heavily subsidized exports from the European Union and the United States in particular.
SOMETHING STIRRING
Yet something is stirring at Cancun. Poor countries are waking up to the clout they wield in an organization that operates by consensus, and are forging ad-hoc alliances to try to wring concessions out of the industrial world.
So on Wednesday, after an opening speech by Mexican President Vicente Fox, four west African cotton producers will demand an end to rich-country subsidies, especially from the United States, that they say are wrecking the lives of millions of farmers.
A larger group of 21 developing countries are putting aside their differences to present a united front and demand the elimination of all farm subsidies -- something the United States and the EU have said is a political non-starter.
"The prospects of us in Cancun dealing with this extremely big and complex agenda are difficult," said South Africa's trade minister, Alec Erwin.
"But certainly, if you don't make progress in agriculture, the G21 grouping of countries have indicated there's no merit, there's no justification, there's no validity in attempting to make progress on other matters," Erwin said.Reuters:
