November 7, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 20, 1422

BRUSSELS, Nov 6: A balance must be struck between free trade and rules if a round of global trade talks is launched at the WTO, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy told AFP in an interview this week.

Lamy will be the European Union’s chief negotiator at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, that begins Friday.

Yes to the liberalization of exchange of goods and services... but with rules, notably on subjects that are important to us as Europeans, the environment, health and consumer information, for example, he said.

Asked about the fallout on the WTO of the September 11, terrorist attacks on the US, the subsequent war on Afghanistan and the worldwide economic slowdown, Lamy stressed that a consensus had been struck, before the attacks, on the need for a new round of talks, for economic as well as political reasons.

The WTO, as the UN of the economy, can send in the current circumstances a strong signal of confidence, security, stability a way to respond to those who want mistrust, uncertainty and insecurity, he said.

It is in this spirit one goes to Doha, which doesn’t mean that everyone leaves with the certainty that we will manage to launch a round of negotiations, but that there will be around the table a sufficient consensus to say what is the direction needed to be taken.

Lamy also reaffirmed that linkage of environmental concerns to world trade would remain an EU priority.

We need to have negotiations to clarify a certain number of blurs, ambiguities and uncertainties in the current articulation between WTO rules and those on environmental protection.

The fact that numerous WTO decisions take into account the environmental dimension is unsatisfactory for us because that doesn’t make it a regulation - we need more security.

When rules are unclear, either you change them or clarify them.

Lamy insisted the EU would hold firm on the issue. Everyone understood that for Europe, the environment was an essential political point. A negotiation does not consist of stripping essential political points from partners.

Lamy stressed he was ready to play tough with the United States, the world’s largest economy.

Everyone has his offensive and defensive points, whether it’s the United States, the European Union or the developing countries.

But the commissioner said the EU side doesn’t leave in a state of Euro-American friction especially intense, heated or dangerous.

Weighing the EU-US relations, he said they were not in such a state of difficulty which would make it impossible together to relaunch a multilateral round.

He said that preparations were “clearly” better for Doha than in Seattle, where two years ago the WTO ministers were unable to launch a new round of talks.

He refused to predict the outcome of the Doha meeting.

A negotiator is neither optimist nor pessimist, he said. His duty is to explain himself, that’s all.—AFP