By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Jul 24 2006 (IPS)

The collapse of the WTO talks conceded Monday marks a “semi-colon in the process of world trade talks, not a full stop,” John Samuel, international director of ActionAid told IPS Monday.

And what could turn out to be a pause in the process towards a world trade agreement could be an opportunity “for introspection on the kind of world trade agreement we really want.”

Because the talks were turning into a 90 versus 2 game, Samuel said. “The interests of 90 percent of the poor farmers were being threatened for the sake of 2 percent of the rich farmers.” The remaining are presumably estimated to be middle class farmers.

Samuel, who is also founder member of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), said the stalemate at the WTO had arisen “because of the obstinacy of the European Union and the United States, and their self- interests.”

The collapse of the talks also “exposes the trade justice rhetoric and the double talk of the G8 leaders, right from Gleneagles to the summit this month.”

The collapse of the talks comes after four years of negotiations since this round of talks was launched in Doha in Qatar towards a world trade agreement.

The Doha Development Round, as it was christened, turned in effect into a round of market negotiations where the developed countries led by the EU and the United States offered to cut heavy trade distorting subsidies to their farmers only in exchange of developing countries opening up their markets for industrial goods from the West.

Several attempts to break this deadlock failed.

“We have always said that no deal is better than a bad deal,” Samuel said. “Trade negotiations had to be equitable and fair. But so far the EU, the U.S. and Japan were calling the shots.”

Just 2 percent of the people in the developed world are farmers, and they control 50 percent of the agriculture trade,” Samuel said.

Heavy agricultural subsidies paid by governments in developed countries to farmers, up to 350 billion dollars a year by some estimates, mean that poor farmers cannot compete against the artificially lowered prices of Western farmers.

“Most developing countries have agricultural economies,” Samuel said. “We just cannot move forward so long as these agricultural subsidies are in place.”

Had developing countries signed the deal on offer, it would have been a severe setback for farmers from countries such as India and Uganda, Samuel said. “What is really disappointing is not the collapse of the talks but the double standards of the EU and the U.S. that led to the collapse.” Those two powers had still been looking for an “extractive relationship” with developing countries, Samuel said.

The EU has meanwhile been pushing for regional trade agreements as the trade talks stalled. Several countries have proceeded with bilateral trade agreements. This has led to fears that such agreements could become locally and regionally exploitative.

“But don’t forget, there are such things as people and citizens in these countries,” Samuel said. And the governments and parliaments of these countries have to be accountable to the people.

So far the trade talks were being rushed along in order to meet deadlines set by the U.S. Congress, Samuel said. “But the U.S. is not the only democracy in the world, other countries have their parliaments, what about them?”

Now is the opportunity to rethink terms of a new agreement that are fair, Samuel said. “We need new terms and conditions of trade based on mutual relationships that are fair and not extractive,” he said. “And they need to be acceptable to the people and parliaments of developing countries.”

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