GENEVA, Oct 27: Negotiators at the World Trade Organization (WTO) were near deadlock on Friday over terms for a round of open trade talks that Western leaders say would help revitalise the global economy, diplomats said.
Just two weeks before a WTO ministers’ conference in Doha, Qatar, where big powers hoped to see a round launched, there are still strong doubts over whether differences can be sufficiently overcome in Geneva for the project to succeed, they added.
Right now, it’s not looking good at all, said one ambassador emerging from meetings at WTO headquarters where one of the most controversial issues patent protection and public health was being discussed.
And although formulas were gelling to resolve some once seemingly intractable problems, including how to bring investment and competition policies under WTO rules, others like environment and agriculture were still up in the air, he said.
Stuart Harbinson, chairman of the 142-member WTO’s ruling General Council who is steering the negotiations, delayed tabling of new draft texts for the ministerial meeting from Friday to some time on Saturday, according to officials.
Diplomats said the postponement reflected the problem Harbinson, the widely respected ambassador of Hong Kong, faced in producing language that would be acceptable to all sides.
Although the atmosphere is better, it’s beginning to look a bit like pre-Seattle, said one Asian envoy, referring the WTO’s last ministerial meeting in the US city in December 1999 when an earlier round project collapsed.
Ministers in Seattle were presented with a rambling draft declaration full of bracketed, or unagreed, language — the outcome of fruitless and often acerbic discussion among national delegations in Geneva over the preceding months.
Harbinson, and WTO Director-General Mike Moore, had been keen to avoid a repetition of that scenario, which doomed the meeting to failure even if the negotiating climate between rich and poor countries and among both groups had been better.
Early this month, the pair presented initial drafts of a declaration that would effectively set an agenda for a round, and of another aimed at easing developing country concerns over current WTO accords which they say are working against them.
But the European Union contested the first document’s formulation of how agricultural subsidies should be treated and demanded that it be beefed up to provide a stronger focus on bring environmental issues under WTO rules.
The United States voiced disapproval of the draft’s suggestion that it should negotiate on its frequent use of anti- dumping measures extra duties slapped on goods US officials deem to be exported at unfair prices below production costs.
Developing countries said a Harbinson plan to deal with their “implementation” issues problems they have with putting accords from the last, Uruguay, round into effect and the slowness with which they say the big powers are opening markets for textiles and farm produce was inadequate.
On the patents and health issue, he has so far been unable to produce even a draft because there is such a gap between the positions of developing countries on the one hand and the United States, the EU, Switzerland and Japan on the other.
Poorer countries — spurred by the AIDS epidemic — want a declaration in Doha making clear that nothing in the current WTO accord on intellectual property rights, known as TRIPS, should prevent them from breaking patents in a health crisis.
But the big powers, whose pharmaceutical manufacturers see TRIPS as a key prop for their industry, argue that such wording would give free licence for patent piracy.—Reuters