TRADE: Deadlock on Talks Holds Firm a Month Before Seattle

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 26 1999 (IPS) - The upcoming World Trade Organisation (WTO) conference in Seattle and the future of multilateral trade talks remain unclear, despite attempts by cabinet ministers from 25 countries, who met through Tuesday in Switzerland, to get things moving.

The ministerial gathering in Lausanne, Switzerland concluded with almost unanimous expressions of goodwill. But the parties locking horns over the meeting to be held Nov 30 to Dec 3 in the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington did not budge a single inch.

The final declaration, read by the Economy Minister of Switzerland Pascal Couchepin, urged the missions accredited before the WTO in Geneva to seek an understanding prior to the conference.

The delegates will have to work hard in the next few days just to identify the essential points on which a consensus is to be reached in Seattle. Once that aim is achieved, the guidelines will have to be defined for negotiating each point on the agenda, states the document.

The declaration adds that the ministers confirmed their determination to overcome the persistent discrepancies, and to adopt in Seattle a balanced programme for talks that responds to the interests of the 134 members of the WTO.

Discussions on the text of the final declaration to be approved in Seattle have been going on at least since July, even though the first formal draft of the document was released just three weeks ago.

A revised draft, distributed on Oct 19, presents the contrasting positions of the two blocs caught up in a stalemate over the possibility of a new round of trade talks being launched.

One of the possible outcomes of the Seattle conference, which industrialised nations are pushing for, is the start of a new round of negotiations as a follow-up to the process of liberalisation of trade stressed in the Uruguay Round (1986-94).

Developing countries, however, want the commitments assumed during the Uruguay Round to be fully applied and enforced before a new round of talks is launched.

The complaint put forth by countries from the developing South is based on the conviction that they threw open their markets without a reciprocal gesture from rich nations, which they accuse of maintaining protectionist practices.

In Lausanne, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky backed the demands for the total implementation of the commitments undertaken. But she did not agree that existing agreements should be renegotiated, as developing countries are also insisting.

The European Union (EU), meanwhile, expressed its willingness to address developing countries’ demands for implementation and enforcement of existing accords, as long as they agreed that the Seattle conference should approve a broad agenda.

A trade negotiator who wished to remain anonymous pointed out that with a multi-point agenda for the talks, Europeans would have a wide range of cards to play when it came to the issue of agriculture, their most pressing concern.

It once more became patent at the gathering in Lausanne that the question of farm products was the main bone of contention, he added.

The EU continues to subsidise agricultural production and farm exports, a practice staunchly opposed by efficient producers, linked in the Cairns Group.

EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said in Lausanne that his bloc was not evading discussions on the agreement on agriculture, but believed that the conditions for talks on farm products did not necessarily have to be agreed in Seattle.

The Cairns Group, on the other hand, supported by the United States and developing countries, wants the groundwork for the talks on farm products to be established at the WTO conference.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia said in Lausanne that agriculture was “top priority,” and pointed out that the sector, unlike those of industrial goods and most services, had not yet been incorporated into the process of liberalisation of trade.

Lampreia marked his country’s distance from the push by industrialised nations, reiterated in Lausanne by Barshefsky and Lamy, for a social clause setting conditions on trade relations.

“We do not believe that for protectionist reasons labour standards should be linked to the multilateral rules of trade,” said the Brazilian minister.

The trade negotiator consulted in Geneva said this week’s meeting had concluded without advances. The conference was “disappointing”, he stated, because the countries simply repeated their already well-known positions.

Also conspiring against the meeting was the fact that Switzerland, the host country, shares the protectionist arguments of the European Union in the matter of agriculture – which led, according to the source, to a less than objective leadership of the conference.

Rubens Ricupero, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, told IPS that no solution to the deadlock over the WTO talks should have been expected from the meeting in Lausanne.

He stressed, on the other hand, the importance of discussions later this week between U.S. President Bill Clinton and European Commission President Romano Prodi.