PREVIEW-WTO mediators to unveil trade talks proposals
13 Jul 2007 11:52:23 GMT Source: Reuters
By Laura MacInnis GENEVA, July 13 (Reuters) - World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediators will next week unveil proposals that could chart the path to Doha Round success or spell the end for the pact that promised to lift millions of people out of poverty. The WTO's latest set of trade talks, named after the Qatari capital where it was launched in 2001, is meant to repeal high tariffs and subsidies that have skewed world prices and made it hard for producers in poorer nations to compete internationally. The negotiations ran aground last year when some countries resisted calls to expose sensitive industries such as rice, dairy, clothing and car parts to more foreign competition. But Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of the aid and advocacy group Oxfam International, said the latest proposals risked "highlighting gaps rather than showing the way to consensus". "No one should underestimate the complexity of this negotiation among 150 countries with such divergent interests. Yet the fact is that everyone knows what actually needs to happen to get a deal -- there simply is not the political will to do it," he said. Hopes for a Doha deal took a further hit in June when the European Union, United States, India and Brazil failed to bridge differences over farm subsidies, farm tariffs and industrial goods tariffs. In their papers, to be released Monday or Tuesday, the chairmen of the WTO's agriculture and industrial goods talks are expected to propose ranges of cuts to those hotly-contested subsidies and tariffs, inside which countries may be able to reach the consensus needed for a deal. Initial reactions to the papers will be critical to the future of the Doha round, which WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has been pushing to wrap up in 2007 to avoid spilling into U.S. and Indian elections that could tie negotiators' hands. If any of the WTO's 150 member states reject the chairs' texts as the basis from which to negotiate a deal, diplomats say the Doha talks are likely to be put on ice, possibly for years. HARD SELL Many governments appear to be struggling to find ways to convince their electorates that a Doha pact would benefit them, said Axel Dreher, assistant professor of economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. "Part of the problem is how to sell it," Dreher said. "Who would be the winners from this round? Overall it's the poor countries that would win. In the developed countries there would be redistributions. Consumers overall would win from this deal, and farmers overall would lose." While a WTO pact may cut shoppers' food prices to some extent, the benefits are not big enough to spur consumers to resist the farm and industry lobbies that oppose it, he said. Crawford Falconer, New Zealand's ambassador to the WTO who chairs the agriculture talks, issued a preliminary version of his text in April in which he said the United States and Europe must move on slashing subsidies and tariffs. His counterpart Don Stephenson, Canada's ambassador to the WTO, has not issued a similar draft on industrial goods, where developing nations are under pressure to open their markets to more competition through tariff cuts. Both chairmen have said they intend to revise their texts at least once after negotiators mull them over. If they are well-received, trade ministers could be called to Geneva in September for another try at concluding the deal that the World Bank says could add $96 billion annually to the global economy.
