DOHA: Amid heightened security, trade ministers assembled on Friday to take up the unfinished business of globalization, a task made more difficult by a range of bitter disputes, especially the one over the price poor countries must pay for patented drugs.

The 142 member nations of the World Trade Organization convened five days of talks in the heavily fortified Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, about 750 miles from where the United States and its allies are bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for the terror attacks of Sept 11.

US Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick arrived here promoting the idea that the WTO ministerial session is another front of that war, one directed at the poverty, despair and hatred that fuel terrorist movements.

But the potential to advance the cause of trade liberalization was jeopardized by standoffs over issues dividing rich and poor nations, known as the North-South dispute. As the conference opened, no issue loomed larger than Third World access to affordable drugs.

“This will be an issue that will cause a lot of long hours,” WTO Director General Michael Moore acknowledged to reporters.

Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS, have the potential to become a deal-breaker, thwarting efforts by Zoellick and his European counterpart, Pascal Lamy, to persuade WTO members to launch a fourth broad round of global trade liberalization talks, threatening global economic growth.

“If the world’s richest countries cannot even put the health of the world’s poorest people ahead of the interests of a handful of drug companies, there is not much hope of a comprehensive deal on trade in Doha,” said Phil Twyford of Oxfam International, a relief organization. The intellectual-property issue “is going to be the litmus test of that political will.”

India, Brazil and a coalition of African countries want the WTO to declare that countries can override drug patents to obtain lower-cost, generic equivalents to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, pneumonia and other public health menaces. Under an agreement signed in 1994, all WTO members agreed to extend 20-year patent protection to all forms of technology, including medicine.

The US, backed by other countries with big pharmaceutical industries, says poor countries already have all the flexibility they need to get affordable drugs to deal with pandemics like AIDS. It has offered to give the poorest countries 10 more years to come into compliance with the 1994 accord, but it opposes a permanent exception that would be available to any country that claimed it faced a health crisis.

In a private meeting with Latin American and Caribbean delegates on Thursday, Zoellick said the United States favours a strong declaration of the right of developing countries to get low-cost drugs to deal with true emergencies. “But I also pointed out the danger,” he said after the session. “If we broaden this to an exception that allows us to do away with the rule, we’re going to undermine the ability to develop hundreds and hundreds of drugs in the United States that might actually cure these problems.”

Thursday’s discussion was one of several scheduled by Zoellick in an effort to bridge the gap between affluent, industrialized nations and poorer developing countries that now represent about 80 per cent of the WTO’s membership. He planned to meet today with African delegates, then with representatives of Southeast Asian nations.

“It’s important to reach out,” he said. “These are individuals. As you get to know them, and get a sense of how they can work together, that can sometimes help you to solve problems.” —Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service.