ISLAMABAD, Sept 15: Pakistan has asked the WTO for complete elimination of textile quotas by the end of 2004, saying it will never agree to any provision that tried to reimpose such quotas.

The Agreement on Textiles negotiated during the Uruguay round required the total phase out of all textile quotas by the end of 2004, says Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan while elaborating Pakistan’s stand on the revised draft Cancun declaration.

In this context, he said Pakistan would maintain a tough stand in these negotiations in order to preserve and protect its national interest since Islamabad had fought hard for its removal.

According to the text of minister’s reaction on the revised draft of Cancun ministerial declaration, a copy of which was made available to Dawn on Monday, the commerce minister while commenting on the cotton sector initiative reflected in the draft text strongly opposed the present text and termed it highly unsatisfactory.

“This was because its language gave the impression that the whole agreement on textiles could be reopened, which would be totally unacceptable for Pakistan,” he said.

Pakistan also demanded more flexibility to developing countries in maintaining relatively higher tariff than developed countries so as to provide some protection to their nascent industries in order to encourage industrialization in such countries.

However, he said so far the draft ministerial text had remained unsatisfactory from this point of view, and therefore needed to be made more development friendly.

On agriculture, he said the difficulties faced by the members of G-21 had been already identified by Brazil and others. “I will not repeat those observations. But, obviously, the Agreement on Agriculture is key to resolution of most other issues,” he said.

The level of ambition on non-agriculture market access (NAMA) and other issues, such as Singapore Issues, were directly related to the level of ambition on agriculture, he said.

“It was also notable that the draft ministerial text did not include a paragraph dealing with Trade and Development, although we spoke all the time of Doha Development Agenda.”

“We are also dissatisfied with para 13 on Implementation. We want the establishment of a ‘negotiating group’ to resolve all outstanding Implementation Issues and to report back by March 2004. We had hoped for an early harvest on Implementation Issues. Now we are proposing at least a mid-term harvest,” he said.

On special and differential treatment (S&D), the commerce minister said the text should take note of the proposal for a framework agreement on S&D, as did the Doha Declaration. Otherwise the text would remain partial and unbalanced, he added.

“We also have certain specific concerns regarding the draft mandates on trade facilitation and transparency on government procurement, which we will raise in the forthcoming consultations,” he said.

For NAMA in Paragraph 6 of Annex B concerning sectoral tariff elimination, Mr Humayun said there should be a provision for less than full reciprocity. Developing countries should be allowed to keep 15 to 20 per cent tariffs to protect their nascent industries.

“We welcome paragraph 18 and 26 relating to small economies and LDCs. Several low-income developing countries are facing similar issues of integration into the multilateral trading system. Products of their export interest face the highest tariffs in developed country markets. We hope that due consideration for special treatment will also be considered for such countries,” he said.

It was necessary that the mandate be confined to addressing the precise proposals presented by the West African states, which was to eliminate the huge cotton subsidies provided by certain developed countries to their farmers.