TRADE: WTO Regains Initiative in Stalled Talks

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 2 2000 (IPS) - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) regained the initiative it lost two months ago at its ministerial conference in Seattle, which ended in “fiasco”, with the announcement Wednesday of the possible start of talks on agriculture and services in the near future.

At an informal meeting held Wednesday amidst what was described as a “very constructive” climate, the WTO General Council left open the possibility that the conditions for the start of the stalled negotiations on agriculture, services and several aspects of intellectual property would be put in place next Monday.

A proposal by General Council Chairman Ali Mchumo for the talks on agriculture to begin Mar 23 and on services Feb 21 will be debated at a formal session of the Council Monday.

Also to be discussed will be a working plan submitted by WTO Director-General Mike Moore, aimed at breaking the deadlock paralyzing the world body’s activities for the past several months.

Among other suggestions, Moore is seeking the application of measures in favour of the least developed countries, which failed to be approved by the Nov 30-Dec 3, 1999 conference in the US port city of Seattle, Washington.

The director-general will also ask the General Council to vote an increase in the WTO budget for technical cooperation with member states, from the current 450,000 dollars to some 6.65 million dollars.

In a statement to the General Council, Moore stressed that he had found considerable common ground in his conversations with member states in the past few weeks.

That was not at all the case at the Seattle conference, where representatives of the 135 WTO member states met amidst a high level of tension created by mass protests staged by a wide range of groups which saw eye-to-eye on just one point: opposition to the orientations of the WTO, the international regulator of trade rules.

The aim of the leading trading powers – the United States, European Union, Japan and Canada – to hold a new round of negotiations to knock down barriers to trade in industrial goods and services ran up against the determination of developing countries to obtain more equitable enforcement of existing agreements before a new round is launched.

The more relaxed atmosphere perceived by some diplomatic sources may at least allow the WTO to begin, in the next few weeks, the talks mandated by the Uruguay Round – the WTO’s predecessor – on agriculture, services and several aspects of intellectual property.

The WTO General Council is to decide, in all likelihood on Monday, the mechanisms to be adopted in the negotiations on agriculture, blocked by protectionist opposition forces in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Norway and Switzerland.

Mchumo said the Council may commission the Committee on Agriculture to hold special negotiating sessions, or decide on the creation of a negotiating group on agriculture under the authority of the Council itself.

In either case, the negotiators would directly report to the Council on the progress of the talks, which would get underway when the Committee on Agriculture begins its annual period of work on Mar 23.

With respect to services, one proposal involves the creation of a negotiating group, also under the authority of the General Council.

At Wednesday’s Council meeting, the first held this year, Moore referred to two of the questions that have drawn the most vehement criticism of the WTO: the transparency of its internal activities and the equitable participation by all of its members.

Moore said that in the consultations carried out, the member states declared the institution’s principle of reaching all decisions by consensus “non-negotiable.”

The director-general’s statements apparently ruled out several proposals set forth in the wake of the Seattle conference, which recommended more restrictive rules governing the WTO, justified by the argument of the need for greater effectiveness.

Moore said consultations on such issues would begin late this month, after the end of the meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Bangkok.