By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 3 2006 (IPS)

As trade liberalisation negotiations head into the make-or-break stage, the World Trade Organisation has stepped up pressure to establish concrete numbers for concessions – a none-too-small task given criticisms against the industrialised North’s “self interest”, and growing divisions among developing countries.

In sessions opening Friday and ending Sunday, ministers from some 60 countries and high-level officials from the remainder of the 149 WTO members will have to work efficiently to meet the end-of-the-year deadline for the “Doha Development Round” of multilateral negotiations, launched December 2001 in the Qatari capital.

The agenda priority is to establish modalities – the formulas and figures outlining the reduction of subsidies and protective trade measures – which would bring the process to the final stage, where lists detailing country commitments are drawn up.

Although the Doha Round encompasses a vast complexity of trade issues, such as services, fishing subsidies, the facilitation of trade through customs and anti-dumping provisions (against unfair competition), the deadlock cannot be broken without major concessions in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy likened the negotiators’ task to building a gothic cathedral, in which domestic support for agriculture and market access represent two columns, and reduction of duties on industrial goods a third.

Carrying his metaphor a little further, Lamy said the project had now reached the point where the columns needed to be topped off with concrete numbers. For example, the European Union (EU) would have to lift the final barriers to its agricultural markets through major reductions of its high tariffs.

The United States would contribute to the domestic support column through reductions of its farm subsidies. The column representing cuts to tariffs on industrial goods would have to be completed by “developing countries that are in a position to do so,” Lamy explained.

The director general is calling for ministers and high-level officials to set aside the rhetoric this weekend and talk real formulas for reducing protective measures and establishing percentages for these cuts, to be able to put some defined concessions on the table for debate.

“It is the moment of truth… I don’t think we can postpone the decision anymore,” Lamy told a press conference Thursday.

But major obstacles stand in the way of WTO authority wishes – namely, the realities of today’s trade system, as some expert non-governmental organisations have pointed out.

For example, Celine Charveriat, of the Oxfam humanitarian association, said the “development potential of the Doha Round has been lost because of the narrow self interest and stubbornness of the EU and the United States.”

“If this deal collapses there should be no doubt as to why and who are to blame,” said Charveriat, head of Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign.

The United States and the EU have played their game of brinkmanship for too long and unless they make a last minute U-turn, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to agree to new trade rules that would really drive development will be lost, said the Oxfam-Geneva representative.

Carin Smaller, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), warned that the negotiation process has become a serious concern for the developing world, under heavy pressure to exchange concessions and meet demands to lower industrial and agriculture tariffs.

Very few developing countries stand to gain anything from the Doha Round as it is currently being played out. If talks focus on these kinds of issues, developing countries will find themselves with no base for negotiations, she said.

The upcoming debates will include formal sessions of the WTO Trade Negotiations Committee, which is directing the Doha Round, and small and large meetings of several groups that have formed along lines of common interest in recent years.

The Group of 20 (G20), created by developing countries dealing with similar agricultural issues – is analysing differences that have arisen among some members regarding two market-access mechanisms that have become issues in the negotiations.

Some Latin American countries in the G20 – Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – have questioned the degree of flexibility that other developing countries, namely the G33, are demanding for “special products” and for the “Special Safeguard Mechanism.”

The special products option was proposed to allow nations of the South to exclude designated agricultural-import products from tariff cuts. The Special Safeguard Mechanism authorises these same states to impose tariff protections when purchase prices or supply influxes reach certain levels.

For example, India or China could take advantage of these measures to protect themselves from soy imports from these three Latin American countries and Brazil.

Fernando L. Nebbia, deputy-secretary of food and agricultural policy for Argentina’s Ministry of Agriculture, told IPS that such tariff protections would be greater even than those established in the Uruguay Round, the last multilateral trade negotiations (1986-1994).

“It would be a giant step backwards,” he emphasised, wondering how the products eligible for that kind of protection would be chosen. These mechanisms “pose a great danger” to exporters in Latin America’s southern regions.

Argentina would come out a loser in these negotiations, predicted Nebbia, adding that his country, Paraguay and Uruguay have already laid out their concerns in a document submitted to the WTO.

Sharply divided interests have caused problems for developing countries. Of the G20’s current 21 members, 10 also belong to the G33: China, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Tanzania, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Nebbia, however, ruled out the possibility that the differences signal major ruptures in the two groups of developing countries, “because there does not necessarily have to be agreement.”

In regards to reaction in Brazil, where some business sectors have also questioned the flexibility demanded by the G33, Nebbia explained that Brazil’s private sector “says one thing, and the government says another.”

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