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G22 warmup for post-Cancun
talks
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA - The group of developing countries known
as G22, or G20 plus, which united in Cancun, Mexico, to
oppose continuing farm subsidies in the United States
and the European Union, is preparing to continue World
Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations despite the
debacle of the ministerial conference last month in
Cancun.
The G22 (Group of 22) held meetings on
Thursday in Geneva to assess the situation after the
thwarted outcome of the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference
three weeks ago in the Mexican Caribbean resort. The
first discussion involved the core countries of the G22:
Argentina, Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Later,
the full membership gathered at the WTO headquarters to
hammer out strategy.
Uruguayan diplomat Carlos
Perez del Castillo, serving this year as chairman of the
WTO General Council, has been holding consultations
since last week in order to lay the groundwork for
relaunching the negotiations after the serious setbacks
in Cancun.
The WTO's mandate, issued by the
prior ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, is
to negotiate and reach agreements on trade
liberalization in 15 areas, with a deadline of January
1, 2005.
What became known as the Doha Round of
multilateral trade negotiations, begun in February 2002,
was bogged down on several points prior to the Cancun
conference, where profound differences came to the fore,
largely along North-South lines, pitting developing
against industrialized countries.
Perez del
Castillo says the exploratory talks held in the wake of
Cancun have drawn positive reactions from developing
countries, which "want to return to the process", he
said. The delegations consulted are "engaged and
committed", and expressed approval of the approach Perez
del Castillo has taken for promoting negotiations, which
is to limit talks to four key trade areas: agriculture,
industrial tariffs, cotton and what are known as the
"Singapore issues".
These issues include
competition policies, protection for foreign investment,
trade facilitation and transparency in government
procurement, pending since the Second WTO Ministerial
Conference, held in Singapore in 1996.
What is
needed now is to get the United States and European
Union excited about joining the process, Perez del
Castillo said. He said he is to meet on Monday in
Washington with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick,
and will then set a meeting with Pascal Lamy, the EU
trade commissioner.
The two trade powers are
hesitant about a renewal of the negotiating process, and
avoid taking the initiative, the General Council
chairman said.
However, among the rest of the
146 WTO members there are signs emerging of a commitment
to the multilateral trade approach, and of a willingness
to get the process back on track before December.
In a brief resolution issued by the Cancun
conference, Perez del Castillo and WTO director general
Supachai Panitchpakdi were given a mandate of reviving
the negotiating process and attaining concrete results
prior to December 15.
The G22 meeting on
Thursday included an assessment of Perez del Castillo's
efforts. The group continues to be active and stands
behind the opinion that the Cancun failure is not its
responsibility, the trade source said.
The group
of developing countries coalesced in the weeks leading
up to the Cancun ministerial conference, originally with
20 members, as a counterweight to the EU's and United
States' protectionist farm trade policies.
A
month prior to Cancun, the two trade powers had
presented an initiative in which they said they would
cede some of those measures and open their markets to
agricultural products from developing countries. But the
developing world's leaders argued that the initiative
did not go far enough, and set to creating their own
bloc for negotiating farm trade issues.
The
current members of the G22 are Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South
Africa, Thailand and Venezuela.
More than 51
percent of the world's population and 63 percent of
farmers live in the G22 countries, which produce more
than a fifth of global agricultural output and more than
a quarter of farm exports.
(Inter Press Service)
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