GENEVA, Dec 17: The United States appeared increasingly isolated on Tuesday as more countries rallied around a draft WTO accord on ensuring better access for poor countries to cheap medicines, trade sources said.

US Ambassador Linnet Deily told other World Trade Organisation delegates that it could not accept a draft text proposed on Monday by the talks’ Mexican chairman Eduardo Perez Motta, a source said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters, she said: “The chairman has asked that we continue to work until Friday.

“We are certainly planning to continue to work with him and the other delegations,” she added.

The 144-strong membership is racing to meet a self-imposed Friday deadline to agree on the issue, which over recent weeks has created deep divisions, as delegates will leave Geneva over the year-end holiday period.

In opening the meeting on Tuesday, the Mexican official commented: “Our time is up,” the source added. The committee will resume talks on Friday morning.

After about 17 countries on Monday said they could support the proposed text, despite what they considered imperfections, other delegations followed suit on Tuesday, the source said.

EU Ambassador Carlo Trojan, speaking to reporters, said that the 15-nation European Union was ready to live with what he called the “creative ambiguity” in the proposed text.

“We would not wish to reopen the discussions on the text, it is the end of the road,” he added.

Kenyan Ambassador Amina Chawahir Mohamed told the meeting, on behalf of the African Group, that although they would like to see changes to the text, they could live with it, the source added.

The problem centres around the WTO’s accord on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), such as patents.

Ministers agreed at a conference in Qatar last year that WTO members had the right to override patents during a public health crisis, such as AIDS, and produce the drugs themselves.

But the medicines produced under this system of “compulsory licensing” are supposed to be predominantly for domestic use and not for export.

Consequently, poor countries lacking a pharmaceutical industry would not benefit since they would neither be able to produce the drugs themselves nor import them.

The ministerial meeting in the Qatari capital in November 2001 gave trade delegates until the end of this year to find a solution.

But clear and deep divisions have been apparent among the WTO’s membership in recent weeks, and one of the most problematic issues has been the scope of diseases that should fall under the new system.

Under the latest draft text, the agreement would cover “public health problems... especially those resulting from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics”.

This is the same wording used by ministers in their Doha declaration.

But Washington has repeatedly said it favoured more specific wording, referring to the three major diseases, as well as “other infectious epidemics of comparable gravity and scale”.

The US ambassador has said the US did not believe illnesses such as asthma, obesity and tobacco-related diseases were part of the problem envisaged in Doha.

“We remain committed to both the intention and the spirit from Doha and we look forward to bringing resolution to this issue so we will continue to work with other delegations now,” Deily told reporters.—AFP