TRADE: Attacks on US Cast Doubt on WTO Ministerial Conference

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 14 2001 (IPS) - The terrorist attacks Tuesday in the United States have deepened the uncertainty surrounding the fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), scheduled for November in Qatar, but the institution’s authorities are ruling out, for now, a postponement of the event.

Mike Moore, WTO director-general, said he would not speculate now on delaying the conference or changing the host site following the attacks perpetrated this week against the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon, headquarters of the US Defence Department, in Washington.

Some countries had already questioned holding the conference at all due to the deep discrepancies that exist on whether the trade ministers should convene a new round of multilateral trade talks aimed at intensifying the globalisation process towards open markets.

But Moore said Friday in Geneva that the WTO is continuing to focus on preparations for the meeting, slated for Nov 9-13 in Doha, Qatar.

“I think that it’s harmful to speculate at this time,” insisted Moore, former prime minister of New Zealand whose term at the helm of the WTO ends in September 2002.

Nevertheless, some trade negotiators – who asked that their names be withheld – expressed their doubts about the security apparatus set up to protect the delegations to the conference, especially after Tuesday’s tragic events.

They alluded to the risk that the United States might launch retaliations – before the Doha conference – against those suspected of being responsible for the terrorist attacks, and that such military actions might involve a country near the WTO ministerial meet.

Under such circumstances, attempts to go through with the conference in Qatar, located on the Persian Gulf, would be seriously compromised, insist the sources.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that one of the people suspected of having ordered the attacks is Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be in Afghanistan, which borders Iran, located across the Gulf from Doha.

The possible change of venue of the WTO conference worries the Arab countries, admitted Moroccan ambassador Nacer Benjelloun- Touimi during a meeting of the Group of 77 developing countries held this week in Geneva.

Benjelloun-Touimi called on this bloc of nations set up within the United Nations and with a membership that now reaches 133 – to demand to keep the ministerial conference in Doha.

The Moroccan diplomat said the trade officials of the United States, Qatar and the WTO, consulted after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, had coincided in wanting to maintain the meeting at the already-established site.

Another alternative, mentioned by trade sources in Geneva, but also ruled out by Moore, is the possibility of holding the conference in this Swiss city, home of the WTO, though without the participation of the trade ministers, but involving lower-level delegations instead.

The resolutions adopted at such a meeting, say its proponents, would be sent later to each capital for the trade ministers’ signatures.

Before Tuesday, when the terrorist violence caused a dramatic shift in the international scenario, Doha was widely seen as one of the most appropriate locations to host the ministers representing the member states of an institution as controversial as the WTO.

Along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the bloc of industrial countries plus Russia (Group of 8), the WTO is a preferred target of the activists opposed to certain aspects of the economic globalisation process.

In Qatar, where access is limited and entry visas are sharply restricted, the trade ministers would be able to meet without the street disturbances that have shaken meeting of international organisations, beginning with the WTO’s third ministerial conference in the US city of Seattle in late 1999.

But even before Tuesday’s tragedies, the preparations for the ministerial conference had been bogged down by the profound disagreements that persist between the various blocs of the 142 countries belonging to the WTO.

The differences strictly in the trade-related sphere were evident during the meeting limited to ministers of 17 countries, held earlier this month in Mexico.

Since 1995, when the WTO was established and the agreements of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations were enacted, industrialised countries have maintained trade protectionism in sectors vital to poor countries, such as agriculture and textiles, and apply obstacles to the entry of developing nations’ exports.

The European Union, which must continue postponing the opening of its agricultural markets for internal political reasons, seeks a new round of trade talks with a broad agenda in a bid to dilute the matter of its heavy farm subsidies among a vast array of other issues.

At the Mexico meeting, the Europeans gave signs of some flexibility in agricultural trade, but they conditioned it upon a compromise from developing countries on trade-related environmental questions, meaning stricter standards.

The most delicate issue, as far as poor countries is concerned, is the implementation of mechanisms still pending from the Uruguay Round, an area in which industrialised nations have taken “a more flexible approach,” said a negotiator who participated in the Mexico meet in early September.

Even before the terrorist attacks on the United States, the panorama ahead of the Qatar conference was clouded in particular by the disputes between the industrialised and developing blocs of nations.

The chairman of the WTO General Council – the organisation’s maximum body -, Stuart Harbison of Hong Kong, currently has consultations underway on the agenda for the Doha conference.

At the end of this month, Harbison is to present a final document with the results of those discussions, which will serve as the general outline for the declaration ministers are to sign in Qatar in November.

The same delegations that met in Mexico – Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, EU, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania, United States and Uruguay – will gather again Oct 14-15 in Singapore in another attempt to hammer out agreements on the Doha agenda.