BRUSSELS, July 5: European Union trade ministers gather in Palermo, Sicily on Sunday and Monday to draft a trade negotiation strategy ahead of a key WTO conference in September and to coordinate policy with countries of the Mediterranean.

Meeting informally, the ministers and EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy are to consider a common position that Lamy will defend at a World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico September 10-14.

The Cancun meeting has been called to review progress toward implementing a new round of trade liberalization talks, which was launched in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001 but has been floundering ever since.

The round is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2004 with a substantial easing in barriers to trade in agricultural products, industrial goods and services.

To date, however, WTO members remain divided on several critical issues: the elimination of agricultural export subsidies, the provision of generic drugs to impoverished nations battling epidemics such as AIDS and the status and treatment of developing countries within the WTO.

The European Union and the United States are at loggerheads over government assistance to farmers, with each side convinced that the other is not doing enough to eliminate trade-distorting subsidies.

The EU, having just approved reforms to its Common Agricultural Policy limiting the provision of subsidies tied to production, is hoping the new measures will strengthen its hand as it confronts the United States, where legislation signed by President George W. Bush last year increased federal aid to farmers.

WTO ministers meeting in Doha in 2001 also agreed that poor countries grappling with health emergencies such as AIDS could order the domestic production of medicines patented by Western companies.

That agreement resolved the issue for developing nations such as India or Brazil that have their own pharmaceutical industries. But it left hanging the problem of poorer states that do not have the capacity to produce drugs and who want to be able to import generic medicines based on Western patents.

The United States, mindful of the interests of its big drug companies, is blocking a draft settlement on grounds that the proposed wording could be interpreted to include medicines for non-infectious diseases such as obesity and impotence.

In Palermo, EU trade ministers will also try to coordinate their trade policies with the countries of the Mediterranean in the framework of the third Euromed ministerial meeting.

The gathering will bring together the 15 members of the European Union as well as representatives from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. For the first time, delegates from the 10 EU candidate countries will also attend.

The conference will seek to adopt measures aimed at promoting “regional integration” ahead of the planned establishment of a free-trade zone by 2010, according to the EU’s executive commission.

The European Union wants to avoid losing clout in the Mediterrean to the United States, which recently disclosed plans to establish a free-trade zone with the countries of the Middle East by 2013. —AFP