ISLAMABAD, July 28: Pakistan has urged the G-20 countries to reject the demand of the developed countries asking for maintaining a huge list of sensitive agriculture products in the framework agreement for making any progress in the area of agriculture.

Participating in a G-20 meeting held in Geneva, chaired by Minister for Foreign Trade and Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Celso Amorim, Pakistan's Commerce Minister, Humayun Akhtar Khan informed the group that there were two issues of vital concern for Pakistan, first related to demand by EU and other rich countries for maintaining a huge list of sensitive products and reduction in domestic subsidy, according to a message faxed to Dawn here on Wednesday.

Elaborating Pakistan's stand, the minister said since these products, under the sensitive list, were not proposed to be subjected to normal tariff reductions, it would mean that there would be no increase in market access for developing countries.

He further said that since Pakistan has no access to Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) in developed countries and such goods covered almost 25 per cent of their tariff lines, any acceptance of a large list of sensitive products would not be acceptable to Islamabad.

The minister said that the second major issue was in the area of reduction of domestic subsidies. The US has proposed creation of a new Blue Box to make subsidies less trade distorting.

However, the G-20 countries were of the view that if a new Blue box was allowed, it should have tough disciplines. Otherwise, it would enable the US and other major countries to shift their subsidies to this Box. This would mean that there would not be any effective overall reduction of subsidies, he said.

So far the US, EU, G-20, G-10 and other groups were not showing any flexibility. If there is a breakthrough, a revised document may be produced by July 30. However, if there is no progress, many observers fear that like Cancun, the talks may fail.

Another possibility is that a very general type of framework may emerge, which would postpone most of the difficult issues to the framework stage. Meanwhile, at the sidelines, the commerce minister also met with George Yeo, Singaporean Minister for Trade & Industry; D.G WTO, Dr Supachai; Jayakrishna Cuttaree, Mauritian Minister for Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Regional Cooperation to discuss the process and substance of the on-going negotiations and increasing bilateral trade with these countries.

Secretary commerce, Tasneem Noorani requested Singaporian trade minister to extend the services of their experts to enable Pakistan to plan and implement its new Trade Policy initiative, which envisages setting up of garment cities and industrial clusters along the lines Singapore successfully did under the aegis of Singapore Trade Development Board.