By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 15 2001 (IPS)

Brazil is celebrating several victories scored at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) fourth ministerial conference in the capital of Qatar, especially on the questions of drug patents and trade in farm products.

The approval of a declaration stipulating that in cases of health crises, public health needs can prevail over pharmaceutical patents was the most far-reaching achievement of the Brazilian-led bloc of 50 developing countries pushing for access to cheaper generic versions of life-saving drugs.

Other decisions reached at the Nov 9-14 conference in Doha, that were applauded by Brazil, were a declaration that farm export subsidies must be “phased out”, and agreement on a review of United States’ anti-dumping rules.

Brazil and other countries complain that the United States uses its anti-dumping laws as a protectionist weapon, and not only to block actual cases in which goods are “dumped” on a market at below cost.

The director of the Brazilian Centre for International Relations, Mario Marconini, described to IPS as “reasonable” the results obtained in a complex scenario characterised by the “need for a signal to reactivate the global economy,” and the continued resistance by the industrialised North to the demands of developing countries.

Discrepancies between North and South were not the only source of disputes at Doha, Marconini pointed out. The world’s industrialised powers were also at loggerheads over several issues, such as US anti-dumping laws, which brought together developed nations like Japan with countries of the South, he added.

Another victory, said Marconini, was the launch of a new round of multilateral trade talks – dubbed by proponents of the talks as the “Doha Development Agenda” – which will enable Brazil and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc to negotiate agreements with the United States and the European Union (EU) in more favourable conditions.

The United States and the EU made it clear that they would only negotiate the questions of farm subsidies and anti-dumping rules – two priorities of Brazil and the Mercosur, which is also made up of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – in a new round of multilateral talks, rather than in bilateral or regional negotiations.

The talks on the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the Mercosur’s negotiations with the EU could run aground if the new round of multilateral talks runs into hurdles, said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Lafer, an active negotiator in Doha.

Brazil sent Health Minister Jose Serra and the coordinators of its AIDS programme to Doha to lobby for a declaration on pharmaceutical patents.

Brazil’s AIDS programme, which began to be implemented in 1996, provides anti-retroviral drugs free of charge to 100,000 patients, and has threatened to override the patents of the drug industry giants in order to produce or buy cheaper generic medicines.

Brazilian Agriculture Minister Marcus Pratini de Moraes and Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Sergio Amaral also took part in the Doha meeting.

The Doha declaration was approved after Brazil caved in on a touchy wording issue – the replacement of the verb “shall” with “should” – which cost it the up-to-then unconditional backing of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The document maintains the spirit of the proposal, and represents “a victory for Brazil’s position,” said Serra. He pointed out that the text allowed any country to resort to “compulsory licensing,” which permits the manufacture and use of cheaper generic drugs without the agreement of the patent- holder, in cases of emergency.

Brazil’s AIDS programme, considered a model initiative, provided a strong argument in favour of the declaration on the waiving of drug patents.

The United States abandoned its opposition to the text because it now also has an interest in obtaining lower-cost medicine against anthrax, the bacteria spread throughout the country by letters in the wake of the Sep 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Brazil was also blasted by NGOs for agreeing in the negotiations that environmental standards cannot be used as a form of protectionism.

That agreement stands in the way of practical commercial sanctions for countries that violate environmental norms, protested the international environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

The Brazilian ministers also celebrated the clause on agriculture in the ministerial declaration, a question that led to a one-day prolongation of the meeting in Doha, which was originally scheduled to end Tuesday.

The clause in question finally cleared the way for the incorporation of farm products in the multilateral trade system, said Minister Pratini de Moraes.

The removal of farm subsidies and barriers to agricultural exports is one of the banner cries of competitive agricultural exporting nations – developing countries as well as several rich ones like Australia, Canada and New Zealand – which face restricted access to the big markets like the United States, Japan and the EU.

Brazil’s annual exports could increase by six billion dollars if protectionism were eliminated, according to estimates by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

However, the big powers were successful in their bid to keep trade in agriculture outside the reach of WTO rules, a situation that mainly affects the developing world, and which contradicts the industrialised powers’ stance in favour of free trade and economic globalisation, according to analysts.

The resistance put up by the EU, and France in particular, weakened the Doha mandate to “phase out” farm export subsidies by preceding that phrase with the following: “without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations.”

Doha thus represented merely a first step forward on the farm trade issue, which will require tough, protracted negotiations, especially for those countries seeking free access to the biggest markets for agricultural products.

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