DOHA, Nov 9: World Trade Organization ministers are deeply divided as they head into a critical conference here aimed at boosting global trade, WTO Director General Mike Moore acknowledged Friday.
“Nothing has been agreed at this stage,” Moore told the inaugural session of a five-day meeting to draft an agenda for a new round of trade liberalization talks.
“Deep differences remain.”
But Moore described draft texts worked out in the past few weeks as “clear and business-like documents” that could serve as a basis for agreement.
Problems before the ministers have been “reduced to a manageable minimum,” he added.
The conference, taking place at a luxury hotel on the shores of Gulf, was formally opened by the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who said success in Doha would “give a badly needed stimulus to the world economy.”
“The world is looking forward to a new round that will give prominence to development, consolidate the principles of justice and equity and open wide the doors of every market to the commodities of the less developed countries,” he said.
Guarded by army troops in response to heightened terrorism fears, delegates from the 142-member WTO, based in Geneva, will try to overcome policy differences to decide on what should and should not be included in a new round.
Their last such initiative, in Seattle in 1999, fell apart when ministers proved unable to overcome disagreements and left the city with nothing to show for their efforts.
This time around the stakes are far higher for the global economy. The United States, Germany and Japan are all plunging toward recession, a slide exacerbated by the September 11 suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
“The world economy needs the signal of confidence in open markets and commitment to international cooperation which agreement here will deliver,” Moore said, noting that the volume of world merchandise trade was likely to grow a paltry one to two per cent this year after 12 per cent in 2000.
“Developing countries face a 10-per cent fall in demand for their exports,” he said.
Moore also said there was still a “vast amount” to be done on trade liberalization to respond to the needs of every WTO member, and he warned there would be consequences for the WTO system as a whole if ministers failed to reach agreement.
“It is critically important for the multilateral trading system as a whole to demonstrate that effective, purposeful cooperation among 142 members and those many still to come, is perfectly possible,” Moore told the opening session.
Yet despite the urgency in the current situation, ministers are approaching the Doha conference at sharp odds on some of the very issues that derailed the Seattle gathering.
Moore said the issues facing ministers in Doha were essentially the same as those in Seattle, but that lessons had been learned from the failure in 1999, principally in making consultations since more inclusive.
The United States and the European Union remain at loggerheads over agricultural export subsidies, the European Union and developing countries disagree on the inclusion of environmental safeguards in trade pacts and poorer nations are clamouring for greater access to markets in the industrialized world.
Moore said it was not true that developing countries had gained little benefit from the trading system, especially the agreements reached under the last Uruguay Round of trade talks that ended in 1994.
“The share of developing countries in world trade and output has risen steadily since 1986, except for the crisis year of 1998, and it reached 30 per cent last year,” he said.—AFP
