DOHA, Nov 10: India sharply criticized the World Trade Organization here on Saturday, accusing it of ignoring the needs of poor countries and badgering them to take positions against their will.

In a strong, blunt language, Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Murasoli Maran charged that a draft declaration before WTO ministers meeting here was neither fair nor just to the viewpoints of many developing countries, including my own, on certain key issues.

It is the negation of all that was said by a significant nunber of developing countries and least developing countries, he told a conference plenary session in a speech released here.

The only conclusion that could be drawn is that the developing countries have little say in the agenda settting of the WTO.

It appears that the whole process was mere formality and we are being coerced against our will.

The draft declaration for the Doha conference was worked out by the WTO general council in Geneva late last month and is being debated by ministers as they try to reach agreement on what should and should not be included in a new cycle of multilateral trade liberalization talks.

Developing countries have made no secret of their profound dissatisfaction with their treatment by the WTO, insisting that trade-enhancing commitments made by rich nations in a previous — Uruguay — round of talks have not been adequately honored.

Even after all the Uruguay Round concessions have been implemented by industrialized countries, significant trade barriers in the form of tariff peaks and tariff escalation continue to affect many developing country exports, Maran said.

Developing country officials have long maintained they cannot be expected to agree to new trade concessions when the provisions of the Uruguay Round have not been fulfilled.

New issues or new agreements will obviously extract new prices and developing countries are hardly prepared for the same, Maran told the meeting.

Among the new issues being considered are proposed moves to link the protection of the environment and workers’ rights to trade pacts, a position vigorously advocated by the European Union.

Maran reiterated that poor countries firmly reject any such connections, seeing in them a transparent bid by the West to use alleged abuses of labor and the environment as pretexts for blocking exports from the developing world.

We consider them as the Trojan horses of protectionism, he said.

He backed a US demand that large scale domestic support and other trade-distorting subsidies for agriculture be eliminated and insisted that all unfair barriers facing farm products from developing countries be removed.

Maran also called on the WTO to recognize that a number WTO trade agreements fail to take account of the special needs of the developing world.

The ‘one size fits all approach’ has clearly failed to deliver.—AFP