By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 16 2004 (IPS)

The fate of the Doha Round of trade talks remains uncertain after the presentation Friday of the draft document that is to serve as a framework for keeping the multilateral negotiations on track to the Dec. 31 deadline for completion.

The document, presented by World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi and WTO General Council Chair Shotaro Oshima, contains the guidelines for the final stretch of the talks, scheduled to begin in late July.

But an initial assessment by heads of missions of developing countries and activists is that there is scant chance that the document, which will begin to be debated in Geneva next week, will be approved.

Celine Charveriat, head of the Geneva office of the British development and relief organisation Oxfam International, called the declaration on reforming global trade rules “disappointing”, and said it was “unlikely to deliver change that benefits poor countries.”

The Doha Round is negotiating greater liberalisation in several areas of trade, while developing countries are pressing in particular for the elimination of the protectionist agricultural policies of industrialised nations.

But the document pays little attention to the hopes of developing countries, Carin Smaller, the representative in Geneva of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, told IPS.

Smaller pointed to the U.S. counter-cyclical payments that cover losses to farmers during short-term price falls. As IATP warned a week ago, the WTO draft document authorises the U.S. government to justify those payments as a limit on production.

WTO rules stipulate that, if payments to farmers are accompanied by programmes aimed at limiting production, they can be placed in the “blue box”, making them exempt from negotiated reductions of domestic supports.

That is of particular interest to the United States, said Smaller, who added that “we are very worried about the document’s proposal to modify the blue box.”

Argentine negotiator Alfredo Chiaradía said that based on his first reading of the document, he believes it is full of “aspects that pose risks, many risks.”

The proposal, which contains the summary presented by the chair of the committee of agriculture special negotiations, Tim Groser of New Zealand, “presents us with enormous difficulties,” Chiaradía told IPS.

The Argentine representative said that “as always, it is the developing countries that have to do the work of climbing the hill of the negotiations.” The rest, he said – alluding to the industrialised countries – are comfortable with the document.

“History repeats itself,” said Chiaradía, referring to the results of the accord on agriculture reached in the Uruguay Round of talks (1986 to 1994), which ended up being unfavourable for the liberalisation of the sector and for developing countries.

The draft proposal was distributed Friday afternoon to the representatives of the 147 WTO member states, although a few hours earlier it had been presented at an informal meeting of senior WTO officials attended by a small group of journalists.

The final decision on the document will be reached in a late July session of the WTO General Council, which governs the multilateral trade body between ministerial conferences.

“With less than two weeks left, we are still miles away from anything looking like the basis for a development round. Almost one year after the failure at (the WTO ministerial conference in) Cancun, it seems that lessons still have not been learnt and that it is still business as usual,” said Charveriat.

One of the most criticised aspects of the document is the inclusion of cotton in the general agriculture negotiations.

The Group of 90 (G90), made up of the former European colonies in the Asia, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions, the African Union, and the least developed countries (LDCs), was demanding separate treatment of the cotton issue.

“Many issues of interest to developing countries are either ignored or not adequately addressed,” said Charveriat.

“In stark comparison, the draft text takes great pains to accommodate the interests of rich countries who want to be able to continue dumping excess produce and shutting their borders to imports from developing countries,” she added.

The Oxfam statement cited the example of cotton, saying that due to “continuing opposition by the United States, the text completely fails to respond to developing country demands that trade-distorting support on cotton be eliminated.”

Smaller said the document was a “let-down” because the G90 was hoping for differentiated treatment of cotton, given the crop’s significance to a number of African nations.

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