By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 20 2004 (IPS)

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) will almost certainly approve this month the draft document it needs to keep the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks going, but the content could be quite watered-down in the end, many delegates agree.

That prediction is based on the countless differences among the 147 WTO member countries raised by the document, which outlines the framework for the second phase of the Doha Round of talks on the liberalisation of global trade, which is to be completed by the end of the year.

”It won’t be easy, but something will emerge in the end,” ventured one negotiator from a developing country.

The delegate from a Caribbean nation, meanwhile, said the discrepancies seen in the past few days will ”inevitably lead to a ‘lite’ text.”

The draft document was distributed last Friday and immediately dispatched by the negotiating teams to their governments to be studied by the relevant cabinet ministers.

But even before official reactions emerged, many negotiators expressed their discrepancies with parts of the draft text.

Oshima and Supachai urged ”delegations not to make too many changes at this stage, but to leave other concerns for the next phase of negotiations.”

”Let’s aim to minimise our disappointments and wait post-July to live and fight another day,” said Supachai.

But the stakes are high, and everyone wants the biggest possible share of the newly liberalised markets, which could be worth as much as 500 billion dollars, according to a World Bank estimate.

Developing countries, relegated by previous negotiations on trade liberalisation, and the Uruguay Round (1986-1994) in particular, are now fighting tooth-and-nail for a larger portion of the markets, especially in agriculture, which is vital to their economies.

Most of the industrialised countries, in the meantime, want to undertake the least ambitious phasing-out of their protectionist farm policies as possible, while obtaining even more advantages through the opening up of sectors like manufactured goods, services and intellectual property.

But in the debate, no country has flatly rejected the draft document, and a veto is unlikely. The main players in the multilateral trade system have more or less expressed acceptance of the draft document, although some with more enthusiasm than others.

The European Union (EU) has not concealed its satisfaction, nor has the United States, even though Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Algeier said the U.S. delegation had a few problems with the document.

The sharpest criticism came from developing countries, although they did not express outright opposition to the text.

The Group of 20 (G20), a bloc led by Brazil, India and South Africa that has staunchly defended the positions of the developing South over the past year, said Tuesday that the text ”provides an appropriate basis for our further negotiations.”

But Brazilian negotiator Luiz Felipe Seixas Correa, coordinator of the G20, warned that ”the text requires important changes and improvements” in order to reflect a balance between WTO members and to be in line with the mandate granted by the 2001 WTO ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar.

The G20 expressed the concern of many delegates from developing nations with respect to what they see as an ”imbalance” in the document.

”Certain major points” of interest to industrialised nations are ”guaranteed at the outset,” while ”other points of fundamental importance for developing countries…are left for the subsequent phase of the negotiations, without a corresponding level of comfort for us,” said Seixas Correa.

Nevertheless, the G20 said it is willing to ”engage in substantive debate, and when the time comes to come up with concrete drafting suggestions.”

The negotiations will continue for a week, after which a four-day General Council session will begin on Tuesday, Jul. 27 with the aim of producing a text that would keep the Doha Round on track.

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