Statement by Ambassador Munir Akram
in the General Council held on 31-10-2001

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman,

We are happy that there is a general consensus that we are all going to Doha. A successful Ministerial Meeting will be a powerful signal toward markets and economic actors that the world's nations are determined to work together to restore, sustain and spread global prosperity by preserving and enlarging the opportunities for open and equitable international trade specially for the developing countries.

Mr. Chairman,

2. It is in this context that we are grateful to you and to the Director General, and his collaborators, for the tireless endeavours to produce the texts which have been presented to us, in particular the Draft Ministerial Declaration and the Draft Decision relating to Implementation Issues.

Mr. Chairman,

3. Let me first digress a bit by raising the Implementation issue since for my delegation it is most relevant to the entire Ministerial Meeting.

Mr. Chairman,

4. The May 3 decision on Implementation Issues stipulated that the Implementation proposals would be considered and decided upon by the 4^th Ministerial Meeting. We are, therefore, disappointed that the draft decision, that has been proposed to us, offers action on only about half of the proposals relating to Implementation Issues after almost two years of deliberations. Nevertheless, Mr. Chairman, in a spirit of pragmatism and compromise, my delegation is prepared to accept the approval of the draft decision as a package without any further change. We hope that the Special Session of the General Council, to be resumed tomorrow, will adopt this package. This is the mandate which was given by the May 3 decision and we should act upon it.

Mr. Chairman,

5. As regards Annex-III, we believe that most of the issues that have been listed as outstanding could have been decided and acted upon before the 4^th Ministerial Conference. However, since there is no agreement on these issues, we are prepared to agree to their consideration in a post-Doha process. As a further concession, we could even accept that these measures could constitute part of a Single Undertaking if such a Single Undertaking is decided upon in the context of other negotiations to be initiated at Doha. However, we would insist that decisions on these outstanding issues should be taken within a year after Doha i.e. by the end of 2002. And that unless these issues relate directly to ongoing negotiations that they should continue to be considered in the 'Special Mechanism' that was established by the decision of 3^rd May 2000.

Mr. Chairman,

6. Having said that let me turn to the Draft Ministerial Declaration. We acknowledge the best efforts which you yourself, Mr. Chairman, and the Director General have made in evolving this text. But we must confess that it does not adequately reflect our positions, our priorities and our proposals. There are, of course, improvements in some areas from the first Draft but over all,

Mr. Chairman, we perceive that the balance of the document has tilted further towards the proposals and positions of the major trading partners and away from the positions of the Like-minded Group and other developing countries, including my country. If the idea, Mr. Chairman, is to secure consensus at Doha, the strong views expressed by delegations, however small, strong views which reflected their vital interests will have to be accommodated in the drafting exercise. A consensus could not be reached otherwise. Therefore, we are extremely perplexed when we see that the paragraph on Labour Standards which was strongly opposed by the Developing Countries, including my delegation, has not only been retained but has been further reinforced. This is inexplicable as a process of moving towards consensus. We also could not accept the reference to negotiations in the context of Environment. This too, is a position that has been taken by a large number of countries in the discussions, open and closed, that have been held in these halls.

7. Mr. Chairman, the positions on the Singapore issues also have moved towards the first options rather than the second options of the text that was presented to us previously. Our position has remained that on all of these issues, there is need for further study and there is no consensus for negotiations.

Mr. Chairman,

8. Notwithstanding that position, my delegation is prepared to display some flexibility on these issues if our partners are ready to be responsive to our priorities that is, for example, we could consider going along with some language of Investment and Competition Policy so long as there is no commitment ab initio to negotiations. We are prepared to consider negotiations on Transparency I repeat Transparency in Government Procurement and on Trade Facilitation, provided that the result of neither of these negotiations will be juridical under the Dispute Settlement System.

Mr. Chairman,

9. We will, of course, expect that such flexibility will be reciprocated first and foremost in the Implementation Issues and, secondly, on the several proposals on the Development Agenda which have been put forward by my delegation and other developing countries. These Development Agenda proposals include the following:

One. The inclusion of Tariff Peaks and Tariff Escalations and the Development Box in the proposed mandate on Agriculture contained in Paragraph 13 and 14;

Two. Recognition of the priority for Mode-4, Movement of Natural Persons, in Services negotiations;

Three. A development review together with a peace clause in the context of the TRIMs and TRIPS reviews;

Four. Specific Agreement to concretize and operationalize, in a legally binding form, existing Special and Differential Provisions and Negotiations of a Framework Agreement on Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries; and

Five. Acceptance of Working Groups on Trade & Debt, Trade & Finance, and Trade & Transfer of Technology with a mandate to submit recommendations on how the multilateral trading system can contribute to advancing the trade and development of the Developing Countries.

Mr. Chairman,

10. My delegation also has serious concerns regarding the final organizational paragraphs of the Draft Ministerial Text. Unfortunately, our reactions to the first draft do not appear to have been taken into account. We believe that there is no need to create a separate 'Trade Negotiating Committee' and additional negotiating bodies, since this will be extremely burdensome for developing countries with small delegations. We see that the concept of a single undertaking is still unclear as regards its definition and its scope and application. In any case, we do not agree to the exclusion of the Dispute Settlement Undertaking from such a Single Undertaking.

Mr. Chairman,

11. It is, I believe, unfortunate that yourself and Director General wish to call a hold to the process in Geneva. I would agree with my distinguished colleague from Tanzania who said that the present text may be more difficult than the Singapore Text and perhaps may be even more difficult than the Seattle Text to which we all had agreed to in the past.

12. I hope, Mr. Chairman, that we shall pause and consider how best we can proceed at this stage. In the first instance, I hope that we will take the decision on Implementation Issues expeditiously. We would also hope that the next few days will be utilised to take into account the most serious objections and reservations of various countries on the Text.

Mr. Chairman,

13. Transmission of the text under your own responsibility, and the Director General's, presents us with a unique situation. Normally, such transmission can only be done through a decision based on consensus or on voting by the General Council. WTO Law, as we have studied it, does not assign any special roles to the Chairperson or the Director General to cover the transmission of recommendations to the Ministerial Conference unless authorised by the General Council.

14. As you said a few moments ago, Mr. Chairman, responsibility for the Seattle Text was a collective responsibility in a collective decision of all the Membership. In the case of both Singapore and Seattle, the texts included agreements and disagreements on various issues. There is indeed no precedent for the Chair or the Director General to transmit only one set of views or recommendations. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, unless we wish to get caught up in contradictions, we have either the option to revise the text after further deliberations or, perhaps more easily, to evolve an accompanying letter with the Text which would set out the different views on various issues. We believe, Mr. Chairman, that the Ruggiero letter, transmitting the Singapore Text, offers a model which could be utilised for this purpose. Unless we evolve such an agreed concurrence of action, we will commence the process of the Ministerial Meeting on the wrong foot and that would be a great mistake because we do not wish to repeat Seattle.

I thank you Mr. Chairman.