Philadelphia Inquirer | By Richard Waddington | February 5, 2004
After months of hibernation, global free-trade talks are starting to stir again.
Many envoys and analysts had written off 2004 after a key meeting of trade ministers collapsed in September. The reasoning was that with elections in the United States and elsewhere, no progress could be expected at the World Trade Organization negotiations for a year or more.
But the mood has changed, partly in response to a strong call by chief U.S. trade negotiator Robert Zoellick not to "waste" the year and partly because of signs progress can be made on issues previously seen as intractable, such as agriculture.
Another factor is the more assertive stance of WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi, who had been accused by some trade representatives of being too diffident in the past.
The result is a new sense of determination, envoys say.
Few believe the original goal of completing the trade talks - known as the Doha Round - is achievable by the end of the year. But partial deals are not being ruled out.
The round, launched in the Qatari capital of Doha in late 2001, seeks to lower commercial barriers around the world from farm trade to services. According to the World Bank, success in increasing global trade could add more than $500 billion to world incomes by 2015 and lift 144 million people out of poverty.
The talks struggled from the start as nations tried to protect their own interests. When ministers met in Mexico in September to try to inject new momentum, they simply deepened divisions. The most intense splits involved farm trade and whether to introduce new trading areas for negotiation, such as pacts on investment and competition policy.
A new alliance of developing countries, the G20, led by Brazil, India and China, made clear there would be no letup in the call for rich states - the United States and the European Union - to cut the massive subsidies they pay farmers, which poorer nations say exclude them from world markets.
Since then, there have been signals from the EU, the world's most lavish user of farm handouts, that it could concede more in agriculture - particularly in the most sensitive area of export subsidies for goods such as sugar and dairy produce.
Last month, Zoellick said in a letter to all 146 WTO members that it was clear farm export subsidies would have to go as the price of any progress.
Instead of reacting with outrage, EU trade chief Pascal Lamy welcomed the letter. "I think that there is a clear political, unanimous will to get the negotiations off the ground," he said.
The new mood could get its first real test Feb. 12 and 13, when senior officials from the G20 and the EU meet in Geneva, with agriculture topping the agenda.
Various Doha negotiating committees, which had been on hold since the middle of last year as the WTO sought to focus attention on just a few key areas, will also resume work this month.Philadelphia Inquirer:
