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| August 02, 2008 | Saturday | Rajab 29, 1429 |
Fate of Doha round
Will a softer approach help?
OTHER VOICES - Bangladesh Press
Breakdown in Geneva
Iraq’s treasures
ANOTHER summer, another failed attempt to clinch a new global deal to boost world trade.
IN the autumn of 2002, I was being shown around the archaeological digs in the city of Nineveh by the director of antiquities for northern Iraq. I was, he said, the first visitor to come to the site in months, and the first foreigner for years. A few weeks later, I climbed the extraordinary spiral minaret in the style of an ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat at Samarra. I wondered at the time whether these sites would one day be thronged with visitors again, or whether they would be reduced to ruins in the war looming just over the horizon.
LET us hope Yousuf Raza Gilani and Dr Manmohan Singh will be able to achieve what their foreign ministers hope they will be able to when they meet in Colombo today. The first high-level contact in 15 months between the two countries takes place against a background vitiated by several unsavoury developments. They include the clashes across the LoC in Kashmir, the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul and a string of bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Indian officials have blamed Pakistan for the clashes in Kashmir, held “elements” within the Pakistani establishment responsible for the bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul and said the peace process was “under stress”. Meeting on the sidelines of the Saarc foreign ministers’ conference in the Sri Lankan capital, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday that the two prime ministers would come out with “a comprehensive statement” on the issue. While the Indian foreign minister’s attitude was marked by restraint, Qureshi sounded upbeat and said the two prime ministers would “clear the air”.
It remains to be seen whether the two prime ministers will succeed in clearing the air. On the whole, in spite of the unfortunate incidents and the resultant misunderstanding, there is nothing to indicate that either side is willing to abandon the normalisation process. The task before them is to pursue the “composite dialogue” with sincerity and dedication and not let what Qureshi called “minor incidents” overshadow the larger aim. As he told a questioner, Pakistan’s overall contribution to the war on terror should not be overlooked, for Islamabad has nabbed no less than 600 known terrorists. Virtually all Saarc nations are grappling with the menace of terrorism on their soil, only the intensity of it has varied from country to country. Pakistan’s task is greater, because terrorists are operating on both sides of the Durand Line, and that not only increases Pakistan’s responsibility, Islamabad gets the flak for “not doing enough”, even though Pakistan has deployed 100,000 troops and has suffered thousands of military and civilian casualties. What is missing is mutual trust in the fight against the common enemy.
Pakistan and India have come a long way since the composite dialogue began in February 2004. In fact, some of the confidence-building measures taken by them could not have been visualised even by the most optimistic among us. At their last meeting in New Delhi, the two foreign secretaries, in spite of the barbs exchanged, agreed on more Kashmir-specific CBMs. Yet more has to be done. Saarc has not been able to turn itself into a vibrant regional grouping because its two major members, Pakistan and India, have not demonstrated the amity needed to make such a grouping a success.
NO deal is better than a bad deal. The US was asking for a very high price from the developing countries for agreeing to bring the Doha round of trade talks at Geneva to their final conclusion. The latter very rightly refused to oblige, knowing that in balance they would be better off without the deal. All that the poor countries were trying to do was to safeguard their farmers from imports of subsidised farm goods from rich countries. America disagreed. This led to a deadlock; and that was that. Another contentious issue — cotton — was not formally addressed but after the collapse of the talks a media blitz was let loose to pit smaller cotton-producing West African countries against India and China. The media message was that US was all set to slash cotton subsidies by 80 per cent but was prevented from doing so by the obstinacy of India and China. About 10 million people in West Africa are said to depend on cotton for their livelihood. But if India and China had accepted the US conditions they would have been blamed for risking the livelihood of many more millions the world over. In fact if Washington had any faith in trade liberalisation rather than in protectionism it would not have enacted, just before the Geneva round, a farm bill that would pay an estimated $1bn a year in subsidies over the next five years to a mere 12, 000 mostly large US cotton farmers.
Before the start of the talks the least developed countries were given to understand that once the Doha deal is done the rich countries would offer them a two-year, duty-free and quota-free market access for 97 per cent of the products they export. This is also out now because India and China did not agree to Washington’s conditions. This is like punishing Tom for the sins of Harry when in fact Harry had not committed any sin in the first place. The Doha round had, over the last six and a half years, tied itself in too many knots. Its fate, therefore, would not have been any different no matter how it was negotiated. It had too many strands — manufacturing, services, agriculture, legal trade rules and intellectual property rights, etc. And as under its negotiating rules “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, it was a non-starter from the very beginning. So, its champions should have the heart and will to accept that Doha is dead. Long live multilateral trade negotiations.
INFORMATION is half the component of good governance: the rest is using information to formulate and implement the right policies. When it comes to wheat and wheat flour, governments in Punjab have made a habit of messing up this simple relationship between information and administration. By living in denial about any flour crisis before it becomes too obvious to hide, the previous and the current governments both have displayed their singular failure to come up with policies that can stem the rot in wholesale markets, flour mills and retail outlets. The situation has been reported in the media extensively and who has not experienced shortages and overcharging from far and wide in the province. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif may not like a comparison that puts him on the same footing as Pervez Elahi. But his big-stick approach is failing as much as did his predecessor’s hands-off way of doing it. With no clear policy and implementation strategy, Sharif has so far tried different things at different times producing contradictory results. As the wheat harvesting ended in May, he was at his munificent best assuring other chief ministers that he will never allow their wheat stocks to run out. Then in another generous gesture he allowed Punjab millers to sell thousands of flour bags a day in the Frontier province at a handsome premium before returning to using coercion to intimidate traders, shopkeepers and millers to make them stick to official prices. That all of this has not worked should be reason enough for him to think again on how he might have taken a different course by not tinkering too much with the marketing and pricing of wheat and wheat flour.
By allowing demand and supply to set prices and giving well-directed cash subsidies to those who are marginalised and left in the cold by the market forces, he might have achieved what he is so badly trying to do through other means. Maybe he needs to drop his big stick and start speaking softly to himself — if not to other stakeholders — about how he can still change course. He might have time to do so.
Bangladeshis in Malaysia
Naya Diganta
MALAYSIA is a popular destination for Bangladeshi workers. The Southeast Asian country plays host to 400,000 Bangladeshi workers who account for a big part of inward remittances. But a large number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia are living in dire circumstances.
A Naya Diganta report says many Bangladeshis in Malaysia are living out their days half-fed. Many are suffering from diseases resulting at times in death.
As many as 266 Bangladeshi workers died in different circumstances in the last seven months, which means on average one Bangladeshi worker dies every day, according to the report. Most of them died from dengue, snakebites or burns. There are also some cases of suicide.
Manpower agents send thousands of workers into foreign countries with promises of well-paying jobs. But the workers end up in palm gardens, which are the only avenues for unskilled labourers. Those who are forced to work in palm gardens are at risk of dying from dengue or snakebites.
It has been discovered that a cartel of swindlers is working in an organised way to send workers out of Bangladesh.
The root cause of the problem is that supply exceeds the demand for workers in Malaysia. The agents extract high fees … for migration to Malaysia. Also, the workers have to pay part of their salaries to the agents once they are employed there. They also have to surrender their passports to the agents once they are in the foreign country, a common practice which blocks their way to other companies for better jobs. Many Bangladeshis were seen walking Kuala Lumpur’s streets in search of jobs. Half-fed, some were seen taking shelter under bridges.
We suggest that recruiting agents, government agencies and the Bangladesh mission in Malaysia work together to resolve the problems. Government agencies must monitor the activities of the recruiting agents. The government should make it mandatory for the recruiting agents to pay security deposits so that victims can get damages.
According to reports, officials at the labour wing of the Bangladesh mission are allegedly involved in corruption. We want the government to move faster to resolve this problem. Handing out punishment to rogue recruiting agencies must be prioritised.The government must assess the level of demand in Malaysia for unskilled workers from Bangladesh. It must curb the exodus of unskilled workers to foreign countries if there is no demand for them. — (July 31)
Selected and translated by Arun Devnath.
This time, however, despite brave words by World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy, who wants to reconvene negotiators in autumn, the seven-year-old Doha round of trade talks appears to have received a quasi-fatal body blow. Few in Geneva are in any mood to restart negotiations any time soon. They should be encouraged not to hurry back.
WTO members need to engage in some serious thinking about the pros and cons of the deal under discussion. Attitudes and mindsets need to change. To achieve success in Doha, WTO negotiators must reflect on long-term global interests rather than their short-term national priorities.
True, an agreement this week in Geneva would have sent a much-needed message of confidence to the world economy and helped inject some equally badly needed momentum into world trade. But Doha’s collapse is not as “heartbreaking” as European Union trade chief Peter Mandelson would like us to believe.
For one, the economic costs of the collapse in Geneva are not immense. The deal being negotiated will not trigger an immediate increase in global exports, imports or investments. Countries everywhere are engaged in opening up their markets, a trend that is not expected to slow down because of the Doha collapse. In addition, for all their rhetoric and posturing in the Doha talks, developing countries such as Brazil, India and China are cutting tariffs and embracing foreign investment. That trend too is expected to last.
In fact, even as the Doha talks were flagging, world trade grew by almost six per cent a year over the past decade. While the rate of trade growth will probably fall to 4.5 per cent this year, the WTO says this is not because of an impasse in trade talks but because of “financial-market turbulence.”
Second, on the political front, the world may be a better place without the acrimonious political squabbles and bad-tempered posturing that has characterised the Doha talks over the last few years.
As countries seek to tackle vitally important issues such as combating global warming and easing food prices, the Doha talks had become an unwelcome distraction, an arena for global power play between the US and the EU on the one hand and emerging economic giants such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa on the other.
In fact, ripples from the WTO’s Lake Geneva headquarters could scupper not only scheduled multilateral discussions on climate change but also any international negotiations being planned to deal with the current food and fuel crisis. The fallout from Geneva will include a renewed focus on bilateral agreements and region-to-region trade pacts. However, the fear is that such a “spaghetti bowl” of bilateral accords will further complicate world trade and benefit richer nations, leaving poor countries out in the cold.
Although Mandelson has talked of a “collective failure” in Geneva, WTO members are already engaged in acrimonious, bad-tempered exchanges and finger-pointing. The US and Japan have made no secret of their anger at India and China for refusing a last-minute compromise hammered out by Lamy on farm tariffs.The two increasingly powerful emerging economies, however, say it is the failure by the US and the EU to open their agriculture markets which is responsible for the collapse of Doha. “This selfishness and short-sighted behaviour has directly caused the failure of this WTO ministerial meeting, which will have a number of serious consequences,” read a strongly worded commentary issued by state news agency Xinhua.
Unusually, Japan too has criticised both China and India. “They need to take more responsibility,” said Nobutaka Machimura, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, adding: “I wonder if they were thinking about the world economy as a whole while pursuing their own national interests.”
Mandelson, meanwhile, has voiced strong criticism of a bill recently passed by the US Congress offering $289bn to the American farm sector over five years, far above the maximum $15bn a year that was on the negotiating table in Geneva.
It is not just a question of bad atmospherics, however. The shadow cast on the Doha round by US presidential elections is likely to grow larger in the run-up to the November polls. Many in Geneva believe that given his criticism of free trade deals, an election victory for Senator Barack Obama will mean little US enthusiasm for WTO negotiations — at least initially. Obama has also said trade negotiations should include labour and environmental standards. Developing countries oppose such a linkage.
The Doha talks were launched in 2001 in a bid to give further impetus to world trade. For most of the past seven years, however, negotiators have engaged in tough bargaining over farm trade liberalisation. The EU and US have bickered endlessly over phasing out high farm subsidies and tariffs while developing nations have asked both to open up their markets. Meanwhile, American and European demands for greater access to fast-growing markets in China and India have also been a key stumbling block.
During the nine-day marathon talks held in Geneva, farm import rules were again on the agenda but this time with India and China asking that countries should be able to protect poor farmers by imposing a tariff on certain goods in the event of a drop in prices or a surge in imports. However, Washington said such a “safeguard clause” protecting developing nations from unrestricted imports had been set too low and amounted to “blatant protectionism”.
The breakdown in Geneva is a damaging blow to the WTO which is already under attack from non-governmental organisations and development agencies for forcing developing countries to open their markets. Restoring the reputation and standing of the world trade body will not be easy.
Significantly, the talks also signal a changing world order. International trade agreements used to be relatively simple affairs. Agriculture and services were not part of the discussions. Also, real trading power lay in the hands of a few industrialised countries including the US, the EU, Japan and Australia who could cook up cosy deals which were then imposed on developing nations.
Today’s WTO discussions are larger, livelier and more heated. Strong-minded negotiators from India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa have transformed the WTO’s early power structures. This time round China also decided to join the ranks of the brave and bold emerging economies by taking a tough stance on farm imports.
WTO chief Lamy is adamant that the talks can and will still be revived. Salvaging Doha should remain on the agenda. But negotiations should only resume if all participants are ready to compromise and act in the wider, global interest. So far, however, signs of such responsible behaviour are few and far between.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.
After the invasion of March 2003, some of us tried to return, security permitting, to some of the wonderful places we were able to visit before “liberation” — with varying degrees of success. Three years on, the digs at Nineveh were in a sorry state, with signs of plundering. The museum at Mosul was empty and locked up, the director had fled abroad, and one of his assistants, Ahmed Hussein, had been shot dead, allegedly by the Scorpion Brigade, one of the Iraqi government’s special forces.
Samarra had experienced a number of devastating car bombings, with horrendous casualties, while other civilians had become “collateral damage” in an American offensive against insurgents. The city was extremely tense.
The minaret and the Shia al-Askari shrine appeared to have escaped damage in the fighting, but an elderly imam complained that hardly anyone came to the shrine from out of town because of the security situation. Four months later, the golden dome of the shrine was blown up by Sunni extremists, triggering sectarian violence that would claim thousands of lives.
In Baghdad, pictures of the looting of the National Museum have become an iconic image of the anarchy which followed the fall of the Iraqi capital. In 2005, it was shut down, the remaining treasures having been locked away in underground vaults. Guards with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood on the parched garden in front of the building, its yellow paint flaking in the sun.
Mudhar al-Zuhairi, one of the museum’s senior managers, told me: “Of course we are angry about what has happened. It is history which was stolen, not just the history of Iraq but the history of the world. But one day, Inshallah, we shall get our treasures back and people will see the glory of their past.”
© The Independent, London
