WASHINGTON, Nov 3: US agriculture negotiators depart next week for a global conference on trade without any guarantees that a new round of negotiations actually will be launched and predicting that Japan and the European Union will present some of the biggest obstacles to the talks.

We know that Japan is going to be one of the countries that we’re going to have to do some tough negotiating with in order to launch this round, US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman told reporters on Friday.

They (Japan) would like to move the negotiations backward in some respects in agriculture from what was negotiated in the last global trade round in the 1990s, Veneman added.

Europe’s opposition to a goal of eventually eliminating agricultural export subsidies also will present problems, Veneman said.

Trade ministers from the 142 members of the World Trade Organization will gather Nov. 9-13 in Doha, Qatar, in an attempt to launch a new negotiating round aimed at further opening markets to agricultural products, services and other goods.

The last time the WTO tried to launch a new trade round, in Seattle in 1999, talks broke down amid dissension between developed and developing countries.

In a briefing for reporters, USDA officials on Friday repeatedly complained about what they see as Japan’s trade-distorting farm subsidies and import barriers.

Japan’s rice tariff is about 1,000 per cent, said David Hegwood, a trade adviser to Veneman.

In recent days, Japan and the United States have traded barbs about the upcoming WTO talks. Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has embraced a cautious approach at Doha on farm-trade liberalization.

Japanese officials countered that the focus of upcoming agriculture trade talks should instead be on US domestic subsidies, which have grown significantly in recent years, but are still deemed to be within WTO limits.

As for the EU bridling at any notion of eliminating agricultural export subsidies, Veneman said negotiators will have to apply some diplomacy.

The EU has a strong reaction to the word ‘elimination, Veneman said. She noted that a working proposal for the WTO farm trade negotiations merely calls for reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies.

And while the practical impact would be the elimination of export subsidies, Veneman said negotiators will be careful to “avoid” using that word.

Nonetheless, Veneman acknowledged that aside from the semantics, the issue is a point of contention that we’ll have to negotiate in a new trade round.

US officials are hoping that any new trade talks will be concluded within two or three years, much quicker than the previous negotiations, and would result in several billions of dollars in additional US agriculture exports each year.—Reuters