ISLAMABAD, April 10: The World Trade Organization agreement on trade related intellectual property rights (Trips) should be renegotiated in case the developed countries insist on their own interpretation of its provisions.

This proposal was floated by The Network executive coordinator, Dr Zafar Mirza, at a conference on ‘WTO negotiations: Doha to Cancun’ organized jointly by the Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Friedrich Naumann Stiftung here on Thursday.

Trips, he said, did not impinge upon the national government’s right to safeguard public health. Nor was it essential for a country to bind itself to patent law because until 1995, as many as 40 countries including the developed ones had not adopted the law, he added.

He said multinational pharmaceutical companies were brandishing it as a flashpoint of globalization to the detriment of a country like Pakistan where medicines were beyond the reach of more than 50 per cent people. Pakistan had been declared a country with the 5th highest burden of tuberculosis disease, he added.

It was the third of a series of conferences being held by SCCI in the run-up to a meeting of South Asian commerce ministers to be held in Dhaka on April 19.

The conference was marked by a lively debate in which experts from diverse fields, both in public and private sectors, presented their comments on WTO agreements, particularly, those on agriculture, anti-dumping, Trips etc.

The ministry of commerce joint secretary, Qasim Niaz, presented an overview of the Doha Conference and the likely agenda of the 5th Conference. The forthcoming meeting was expected to give some new directions for keeping the overall process on track, he said.

The FPCCI vice-president, Sohail Altaf, expressed the apprehension that the developed countries might exploit the WTO rules pertaining to environmental protection such as sanitary and phyto-sanitary safeguards as non-tariff barriers to imports from developing countries.

Huma Fakhar, a legal consultant on WTO disputes, drew the audience’s attention to the institutional weaknesses of Pakistani firms in handling such matters.

Abid Farooq of APTMA stressed the need for developing South- South trade. He also regretted that Pakistan had not found it possible to join any regional trade organization.

Akhtar Mahmood, invoking his critical capability as most bureaucrats do after retirement, rejected WTO agreements both in terms of objectives and achievements.

He, however, asked Saarc members to persuade industrialized countries to mend their regimes governing their trade in wheat, cotton, rice, sugar, tea, citrus fruits, oilseeds, milk and milk concentrate.

The foreign ministry’s economic coordination director, Dr Asad Majeed Khan, speaking in his “personal” capacity, observed that anti-dumping laws did not protect the developing countries.

He proposed a three-tiered approach on how developing countries could be treated differentially and more favourably under that agreement.

Prof Afzal Bajwa, a former commerce ministry official, who remained involved in Pakistan’s negotiations under the Uruguay round and now a consultant on trade issues, quipped that WTO was a game of the Anglo Saxon powers.

Interested very little in textiles etc, these powers, he predicted, would use the Cancun conference to heal the wounds inflicted on transatlantic alliance by accommodating each other on the new issues.

Saarc countries stood good chance of benefiting from this development if they went to Cancun well-prepared on these issues, he added.

Dr Khadim Hussain from Action Aid said Pakistan’s ability to develop an independent, objective policy on WTO was undermined by the over-arching dictates of international financial organizations.

The National Tariff Commission chairman, Dr Faizullah Khilji, said like all laws, the WTO agreement could be interpreted in a variety of ways. The problem, he added, was that the businessmen had to operate globally and this they could do only by abiding with the global norms.

Shaheen Rafi Khan of the SDPI and Trips committee chairperson Qazi Faez Isa also presented their papers.