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Future uncertain after collapse of WTO
talks
By Diego Cevallos
CANCUN, Mexico - The World Trade Organization
(WTO) ministerial conference in the Mexican resort of
Cancun came to an abrupt end on Sunday without an
agreement, leaving a big question mark hanging over the
future of the international trade talks.
The
negotiations have collapsed, the positions are very
distant, and there is no possibility of reaching an
accord, at least for now, said delegates of several
governments. The talks will continue at WTO headquarters
in Geneva.
The trade ministers of the 146 WTO
member countries hoped to agree on a final declaration
Sunday, or else planned to continue meeting through
Monday. But after hours of intense negotiations, the
gridlock remained, despite the Mexican government's
efforts until the last minute - as host - to achieve a
compromise.
"Talks have collapsed and there is
no agreement. It's over. We'll see each other at the
next meeting in two years," George Odour Ong'wen, a
member of the Kenyan delegation, told journalists. The
chairman of the WTO conference, Mexican Foreign Minister
Luis Derbez, said it made no sense to continue the
discussions, because the positions were irreconcilable.
This is the second failed WTO conference since
the world body was created in 1995. Talks also collapsed
at the third ministerial meeting in the US city of
Seattle in 1999, amid massive street protests by the
"anti-globalization" movement.
In the last
stretch of the talks, the ministers were working with a
draft statement presented by Mexican government
officials on Saturday, which failed to resolve the
question of farm subsidies, and did not set time frames
or deadlines for meeting certain commitments agreed in
the Doha Development Agenda, which emerged from the last
WTO conference two years ago.
The draft document
also left pending the possibility of whether or not to
move forward on "new issues" such as cross-border
investment and transparency in government procurement.
The draft statement, which was drawn up on the
basis of the positions expressed in four days of talks,
disappointed virtually everyone. The government
delegates worked hard on Sunday, without success, to
achieve a consensus. Huge discrepancies between rich and
poor countries, and among developing countries,
persisted up to the end, said a member of the Brazilian
delegation. The meeting opened last Wednesday with a
marked polarization between the world's richest nations
- the United States, the members of the European Union
and Japan - and a growing bloc of developing countries,
led by Brazil, India and China, which has come to be
called the Group of 22 (G22).
After the failure
of the talks was announced, the delegates of several G22
members - Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and South Africa -
told reporters that the bloc would remain united in
future negotiations, wherever they were held. The talks
on trade in agriculture will continue, they stressed.
Government delegates admitted that the draft
declaration was extremely limited in scope. The
document, which aimed at a compromise, merely stated
that the 146 WTO member countries reaffirmed their
commitment to move toward the objective of reducing the
farm subsidies of industrialized nations, without
setting timetables or targets for doing so. It also
stated that the eventual phasing-out of subsidies would
only apply to certain products.
"They are trying
to reinterpret the mandates set out in the Doha
declaration," which is unacceptable, said Brazilian
Foreign Minister Celso Amorin.
With respect to
the majority of issues on which some kind of agreement
was hoped for, the draft document only mentioned a
commitment to continue negotiating at WTO headquarters
in Geneva, under the Doha Development Agenda.
At
the fourth WTO conference, held in Doha, the capital of
Qatar, in 2001, the member countries agreed to move
toward an international trade system that would help
pull developing nations out of poverty.
The Doha
Round of trade talks was to have been completed by
January 1, 2005, but many observers already doubted that
would happen, even before Sunday's failure in Cancun.
Since the Doha conference, the world's
governments have failed to reach agreement on how and
when to phase out agricultural subsidies, which amount
to a combined total exceeding US$1 billion a day in the
United States and the EU.
"Frustration" and
"discouragement" were among the words repeated by
government delegates when referring to the draft
ministerial statement.
The most optimistic view,
expressed by some delegations, was that the document was
a "starting point" from which to continue negotiating.
In the corridors of the conference on Sunday, there was
an air of worry and concern among the delegates, many of
whom had warned at the start of the meeting that another
failure would deal a harsh blow to the international
trade system, which began to emerge in the late 1940s.
As of Saturday, the only thing everyone agreed
on was that no one accepted the draft declaration, WTO
spokesman Keith Rockwell admitted late that day.
Activists said the document ran counter to the
interests of the developing world. Greenpeace Mexico
spokesman Alejandro Calvillo said: "It's a good thing
that this ended without an agreement."
Europe
and the United States are pushing developing countries
into the abyss, and that was already seen in the base
document for the Cancun meeting, said Friends of the
Earth representative Ronnie Hall.
Phil Bloomer,
with the British relief group Oxfam, said the WTO talks
would never be the same again. Cancun failed because of
the power and cohesion of developing countries, he
maintained.
(Inter Press Service)
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