By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Sep 28 2001 (IPS)

The real threat to the success of the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to be held in Qatar this November, is the discrepancies between rich and poor countries, not the security risks implied by the current international situation, say trade negotiators.

The WTO is preparing for the conference, to be held in the Qatar capital, Doha, Nov 9-13, but the 142 member countries have not succeeded in reaching agreement on the draft of the declaration to be signed by the ministers at the meeting’s conclusion. The document is intended to serve as a roadmap for what many hope will be a new round of multilateral trade talks.

Meanwhile, concerns remain that the crisis triggered by the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York could affect how the conference plays out, or whether it will be held at all. For now, organisers say only that the tensions have created uncertainty about the meet.

US Trade Representative Roberto Zoellick admitted this week that the world’s current political situation might obligate the United States and the rest of the members of the WTO to reconsider their attendance at the Qatar conference.

Zoellick stressed that security is important and that due to the current volatile situation, it is difficult to predict what the conditions will be as the meeting approaches. “The first imperative is security and we’re in a moving situation, so it’s somewhat hard to say what the conditions will be” in November, he said.

The European Union’s Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy has spoken against relocating or postponing the Qatar conference, as has WTO director-general Mike Moore.

Zoellick said he is encouraged that the Doha meeting will succeed in launching a new round of multilateral trade talks, and counselled against changing the venue, saying it would undermine momentum toward that objective.

But trade negotiators in Geneva seem to agree that the security issue weighs heavily over the conference.

With a nervous eye to the third WTO ministerial conference, held in the US city of Seattle in 1999 and greatly disrupted by mass street protests, Qatar authorities had already begun setting up strict security measures – even before the Sep 11 attacks.

In any case, the matter may be resolved Monday when Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thandi, meets with US officials in Washington.

In Geneva, the disagreements between the trade delegations remain a major stumbling block in efforts to draw up the Doha Declaration.

The latest attempt to harmonise the various positions, a document presented Wednesday by the chair of the WTO General Council, Stuart Harbison, met with a range of negative responses.

The harshest criticisms came from representatives of developing countries and from the Cairns Group, a bloc of 18 nations that oppose government protectionism in the agricultural sector.

Wednesday evening, when the WTO distributed copies of Harbison’s proposals, an ambassador from a developing country stated that their treatment of matters related to the application of pending agreements was “a joke.”

Harbison presented a proposal on the pending application of past accords along with another that contains the draft of the ministerial declaration for the Doha conference.

The draft declaration favours the incorporation of new issues in the multilateral trade negotiations, just as most industrialised countries had wanted.

The text proposes holding talks to establish international norms that ensure transparent, stable and predictable conditions for long-term trans-border investments, particularly for foreign direct investment.

The last multi-party attempt to foment foreign investment was spoiled by non-governmental organisations when they attacked the initiative of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD), whose 30 members include all of the world’s industrialised countries.

Harbison’s draft text is prompting ministers to convene negotiations about competition policies, transparency in public contracts and the facilitation of trade by streamlining customs procedures.

In all of these matters, which are of great interest to the industrialised countries, the draft contains substantial proposals, commented a negotiator for a Cairns Group member country.

But on the issue of agriculture the document avoids any concrete definitions and is limited to listing those aspects that are still considered contentious, criticised the diplomat, who requested not to be identified.

The Cairns Group, made up of nations that provide little or no government subsidies for their farming sectors, demands that agriculture receive similar treatment to that of industry, with minimal or zero tariffs.

Most of the OECD countries, meanwhile, spend a combined total of approximately a billion dollars a day to subsidise inefficient farming and to gain access to foreign markets with their subsidised prices.

The agricultural, or rural, panorama is completed by the fact that developing countries are net importers of agricultural products and have a large population that depends on subsistence farming.

The documents distributed by Harbison and the WTO are unbalanced and, as far as the matter of applying the already- agreed treaties, there has been almost no progress, summarised the negotiator.

The WTO General Council is to study the two documents in sessions scheduled for Oct 1-3 in Geneva.

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